SRA: More investigations
A “significant and sustained increase” in the number of reports about solicitor misconduct is fuelling the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) plans for an £11m increase in its budget to £168m, it said yesterday.
This is set to translate into a 16%, or £26, increase in the SRA’s portion of the practising certificate fee to £190, but it will be largely offset by a £20 reduction in the individual contributions to the SRA Compensation Fund to £70.
The £6 net increase is a rise of 2.4%.
However, 60% of the fees collected come from the profession come from firms and the increase for them will differ depending on their turnover. Where turnover is unchanged, the SRA expects most firms’ fees to increase by 13-15%.
The compensation fund contributions for firms will fall from £2,220 in the current year to £1,950 in the year from 1 November.
Separately, the Law Society is consulting on the £38m it plans to raise from practising fees to fund its work, a 2% increase, although it has not specified what that would mean for its portion of the practising certificate fee, which last year was £307 in total between the two.
The SRA figures came in its draft 2025/26 business plan and budget, which is now out for consultation.
The proposed £168m budget – 7% higher than the total in the current year – is made up of four main sources:
- Regulatory fees of £86.5m, up 23%;
- Education and training income of £58m, down 13% with fewer SQE candidates expected next year after a spike this;
- Costs recharging to the compensation fund of £18m, up 18%, which is mainly recovering the cost of interventions; and
- Other regulatory income of £4m. There is also interest of £1.7m.
The draft plan said that the number of solicitors the SRA regulated has grown by a third in the last decade.
“Recently we have seen a significant and sustained increase in the volume of the reports we receive about solicitors’ misconduct. Compared to the previous year, we have seen a 20% increase…
“This is resulting in more investigations, opening on average 40% more a month. These increases will likely result in more enforcement action, placing further demands on our resource.
“It is not yet clear what is driving these increases, and we are looking into this.”
The regulator stressed that it was finding efficiencies – concluding 18% more investigations than a year ago – and deprioritising some areas.
The latter include pausing work on producing a policy statement on ESG (environmental, social and governance), and on developing a “safe testing environment” for innovation and technology “while we focus first on exploring demand and potential benefits”.
Included in the business plan are a five-year evaluation of the transparency rules – “from which we will consider new rules and guidance for the profession and consumers” – and a programme of work on professional ethics.
The plan noted that the SRA needed to increase its legal and enforcement budget by £2.8m, in part because of “progress required on cases linked to the Post Office Horizon scandal – one of the largest ever investigations we have carried out”.
The increase was also need to deal with the investigation and enforcement work resulting from the increase in complaints.
Money will go as well to the next stage of the SRA’s risk and data programme. As part of this, it has “developed a draft theory of harm framework which we are using to identify the nature of potential risks to our regulatory objectives” alongside a supporting analytical framework “covering some of our existing datasets in key areas of potential risk in order to pinpoint key intelligence to help us spot issues.
“And we have used data science to analyse a range of issues, including the underlying causes of the increased number of cases we are receiving.”
SRA chief executive Paul Philip said: “We’re mindful of the pressures on the profession. Over the past six years, we’ve kept our costs down, with fees rising by an average of just 2% per year.
“We remain committed to being efficient and focused, but the scale of new challenges means we need extra resource to continue protecting the public effectively and proportionately.”
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