Intervention: Firm operated under seven brand names
An eight-office Home Counties law firm – operating under seven different names – was closed down yesterday by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
The regulator also intervened in the practices of three lawyer manager at Hunter’s Solicitors.
Headquartered in High Wycombe, Hunter’s has about 44 staff offering litigation, insolvency, family, residential and commercial conveyancing, and private client services.
It is not to be confused with well-known Lincoln’s Inn law firm Hunters.
An SRA notice said it intervened in the firm because there was “reason to suspect dishonesty” on the part of Jeff Hazelgrove, who was its compliance officer for finance and administration.
Further, the SRA intervened in the individual practices of Angelo Luiz-Barrea, Christopher Stocker and Howard Rind, as managers of the firm for failing to comply with SRA rules.
The firm operates as Hunter’s in High Wycombe and Westcliff-On-Sea, near Southend, and also as Franklins Solicitors (Abingdon, Oxfordshire), Batemans (Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire), Kealy Farmar (Henley-on-Thames), Grower Freeman (central London), Colemans (Maidenhead, Berkshire) and Graham White & Co (Bushey, Hertfordshire).
SRA records show that, in April 2025, Hunter’s was fined £24,820 for breaches of the Money Laundering Regulations, specifically for not having in place for over three years to May 2024 a firm-wide risk assessment, as well as the necessary policies, controls and procedures. It also failed to train staff about money laundering risks.
The SRA said Hunter’s had put in place measures to ensure continuing and future compliance.
Mr Luiz-Barrea also has two rebukes on his record, from 2023 and 2025, both for failing to comply with undertakings he gave.
The SRA has appointed Emma Porter, a partner at Shakespeare Martineau, as its intervention agent.
The news comes in the wake of last month’s much larger collapse of, and then SRA intervention in, PM Law.
Minutes of last month’s meeting of the Legal Services Board said it has written to the SRA for a chronology of events from when it first identified PM Law Group as posing a potential risk to consumers until the point of intervention into PM Law and associated firms.
“We have also asked the SRA to set out the steps it is taking to assess the wider risk to consumers in light of this intervention, and what immediate steps may need to be taken to reduce that risk.”