Solicitors Regulation Authority Reviews 

The SRA do not investigate solicitor dishonesty/lack of integrity. After triaging three reports which i submitted, I was told by the SRA investigation team that they do not investigate and do not take regulatory action unless they are presented with more substantial evidence.

Further evidence can only be accessed by the SRA in their regulatory capacity as it is held by the solicitor who features in the reports.

This is disappointing, as the SRA website led me to understand that they took suspected dishonesty seriously.

Open email 30/6/23 to SRA

Thank you for your complete page of nonsense & fob offs.

Would you now provide details of what 'Other sources' the information I requested can be found from.

The unlawful admin building calling themselves Chester county 'court' were my first go to source for providing the full name of this contracted basic solicitor who their for profit corporation give the job title of 'judge' for the day, As you will be very aware no such person with the name of 'Bates' exists on the Law Societies list of actual judges.

As i need to take legal action against this Bates man or woman then a full name is required, Chester couty 'court' have refused to supply & are therefore perverting the course of justice.

It appears this Bates character is impersonating a lawful 'judge' , very serious criminal offence carrying a severe custodial sentence.

I entrust you will now supply the information i have requested as it would be nice to leave at least a 2* review of the SRA on Trustpilot, you only seem to have 1* reviews.

Could I also ask when was the last time the SRA were audited to check you are performing the image you portray to an acceptable standard ? I feel this is of public interest.

You also appear to still not have answered my formal provable allegations of the criminal offences of Fraud, Perjury & bullying (coercion) of own client, submitted to yourselves on 22/12/22 against PROXIMO solicitors (Chester), solicitors Amy Jane Skelly & Stephen John Morse.

Sincerely

Lee : gilliland

Absolutely rubbish. Don't waste your time contacting them. Needs closing down.

Phoned SRA today and was met with the most incredible ignorance about the Law. As someone below said: "Sue your solicitor in the small claims court. You can sue for professional negligence for up to £10,000. Most of time they won’t defend it as its not worth their time. They settle out of court." Good luck.

Fraudulent and state sponsored operation.
We had an issue with a Leeds based lawyer called LCF Law.
We sent our info to the SRA for them to investigate.
It did not take long for us to realise the SRA was not there for the consumers.
The SRA “investigator” is supposed to be fully impartial but we can report this is absolutely not the case.
We had very good evidence of wrongful actions against LCF Law and this guy from SRA ignored everything.
Instead the SRA concluded using their beliefs and opinions and to hell with the consumers evidence.
The SRA provided zero evidence to conclude against us. This is what they do….this is what they’ve been allowed to do….against UK Consumers.
Do Not feed the SRA….they are not worth anyones time.
A cash cow with 100% Bad reviews…..thats worth thinking about for a moment.
Zero stars would have been more appropriate.
Consumers are meant to have zero chance of success with yet another time wasting exercise.

The SRA also refuses to investigate even this, because the SRA is funded mostly by .... UK solicitors!! I have sent to the SRA proof that verifies my complaints about Mr K. The SRA also refuses to investigate Mr K's deliberate failure to disclose to HMRC almost £20,000 received by the "favoured" heir. He omitted this large cash gift on his IHT403/3 form which, I believe, was evidence of dishonesty. Supposedly, the SRA investigates all allegations of dishonesty, but that is not true! They simply refuse to investigate.
The SRA also refused to ask Mr K why he lied to me regarding when he obtained the cash from one of late father's bank accounts.
My father died in March 2021. Mr K has, for almost two years, refused to send me the two main, large bank statements for 2020 and 2021 that my father owned when he died - except for the closing statements which showed almost zero activity.
Also, Mr K UNDERSTATED my father's two Barclays accounts balances by more than £22,000 - according to the *official Barclays statements*which, obviously, are the CORRECT balances. Mr K used a secretive, non-UK SIX DIGIT account to hold the £60,000 of Barclays cash. Why would an executor *understate* bank balances? I can think of only one reason. Dishonesty.
Also, utterly improperly, Mr K asked just one of the other three heirs to meet with him privately to finalise the IHT forms! But I, with a far larger share of the estate, was not even asked to take part!
I currently live abroad, but a Whatsapp, Skype, Zoom etc video call would have sufficed. I was not informed of said "meeting with J****" until after it had ENDED! This was outrageous and dishonest.
Regarding another of my father's UK bank accounts, all six pages of transactions were redacted, presumably all debithus the closing balance was meaningless.

Mr K was unable to ascertain the position regarding my late mother's domicile status, because he didn't even try to find out. Fortunately, I contacted an accountant friend of mine, which saved all 4 heirs a lot of tax. My friend found the solution in about an hour. Yet again, Mr K was utterly useless.
Also, Mr K allowed two other heirs to enter my father's flat before and after my father had died.

I was unable to travel to London due to the severe restrictions throughout most of 2020 and 2021.
Also, Mr K was supposedly obliged to preserve and protect the estate, BUT he allowed another heir to obtain a highly suspect deathbed FURTHER £40,000 gift to another heir, in addition to her share of the WILL. Mr K opted not to prepare said Deed of Gift, but he tolerated ANOTHER, outside solicitor drafting the Deed of Gift. Outrageous! My father died a few days later. My father never had any prior dealings with said outside solicitor, but my sister had.
It was my sister, the sole benefactor of this SURPRISE gift, who instructed this outside solicitor. At the time, my father was at death's door and was taking large doses of MORPHINE to reduce his severe terminal pain from multi-organ cancer.
Also, Mr K tolerated another heir, "J***a", when she tried to extort monies from me. Her text to me, via Whatsapp, was most explicit. Unless I agreed to her absurd, zero evidence claim, I would have to contact my former wife and have some non-existent jewelry that my former wife NEVER RECEIVED FROM MY FATHER. "J****" was then a newly admitted solicitor, but she had no power to alter the Will. Only Mr K could have done that.
With, surely, Mr K's consent, J**** texted to me that if I refused to comply with her outrageous, bogus demands, my share of the estate would be reduced.
But only Mr K could do that, not an heir.

There is much more, all documented. But the two villains remain:
1. the useless SRA who refused to investigate ANY of my documented, emailed complaints about Mr K and
2: Mr K, the sole executor, who also THREATENED ME, BASELESSLY, via an email which I still have.
The SRA recently ensured that a newly qualified solicitor would be struck off for evading about £450 of train fares. BUT, regarding Mr K's repeated refusals to:
1. explain what became of nearly £60,000 of estate cash, no problem there!
2. sanction Mr K for declining to report £20,000 of taxable cash on HIS HANDWRITTEN IHT403/3 form regarding gifts to heirs to HMRC, no problem there either!
The SRA has now blocked my further emails.
And, Mr K still refuses to explain his use of a mysterious, SIX DIGIT 232453 bank account to hide 60,000 pounds.
The Law Society ALSO exists to aid, assist and represent the interests of UK solicitors. The Law Society was thus also utterly useless.
And, Mr K lied to me regarding when he obtained the cash from another estate bank account.
Mr K also never explained why he improperly omitted to disclose to HMRC nearly 20,000 pounds to the same relative. The form is IHT403/3 - gifts.
All 20,000 pounds was fully taxable.

Need I write a review given all these comments. Date of experience take your pick I have had many.

A solicitor has presented fraudulent legal documents to HMRC, SRA and Ombudsman, nothing Legal about Ombudsman to the sum of £120,000 and stolen £90,000 from the client account on the back of these fraudulent documents. These legal documents are my grandmothers death statement, probate forms and oath. The SRA are a legalised racketeering/extortion organisation, you must pay us and we will protect you, aiding and abetting, preventing the course of justice with the full support of Action Fraud and my extremely good evidence proves this. I have invoices and voice recordings of these fraudsters telling us that these documents are fraudulent and still the SRA and Action Fraud are denying this extremely good evidence. I also have a incriminating decision from a Ombudsman investigator who originally said in her decision that the full £90,000 should be returned and that there is no evidence to prove that this money was owed. All this solicitor had to do was object to this decision and £90,000 was reduced back down to £50,000 leaving this solicitor with a nice £40,000 bonus for his crimes and there’s nothing I can do about it. I have already wasted £17,500 on legal advice and help. He has not provided any evidence, he just said I made a mistake on my ledgers yet my invoices prove there was no mistake. I have recorded all my telephone conversations with the so called SRA investigators, 7 in all, that prove they are aiding and abetting criminals and preventing the course of justice that I have presented to Action Fraud and they too cover for the SRA and solicitor’s. I cannot even find a solicitor that will help me prosecute another solicitor. I have gone through all the complaints procedures and so called independent reviews and they all stick together. Even the National Crime Agency or Ministry of Justice?? will do nothing about this. I have also reported this and sent my extremely good evidence to more than 30 MP’s and 30 Lords and Baroness and I hit a wall of silence, corruption to the core. I will continue my fight until something is done about this,my evidence is just too good to be denied for ever. We are all not just victims of crime and wrong doing we are all victims of miscarriages of justice. Wish me luck.
Record all your telephone conversations with these SRA criminals, not that it’s likely to do any good.

Don’t waste your time with them.
The SRA refused to investigate or even consider my evidence. Many of the investigators are ex MET police! Why are the defending solicitors?
Sue your solicitor in the small claims court. You can sue for professional negligence for up to £10,000. Most of time they won’t defend it as its not worth their time. They settle out of court.
Best of luck.

Atrocious organization: inefficient, inept, slow, useless. If you have had a problem with a UK solicitor, the SRA are very unlikely to help you with it. There are several petitions to reform or scrap the SRA, rightly so in my view; they (the SRA) are completely useless in my experience.

Made a complaint re a solicitor telling direct and blatent lies in writing. "Just an error" say the SRA . Complained to their complaints team , been over a month heard nothing.

No matter how strong your pieces of evidence are to instigate an investigation - the way they operate and decide what to investigate basically makes dishonest Solicitors and Law Firms bullet proof.

E.g. they won't investigate a matter that is not part of a wider pattern (since when do right and wrong depend on quantity? Oh, and no matter if the Annual Stats of the Legal Ombudsman contradict them).

If you query the rationale behind their decision, they will dodge your questions and provide a copy-paste answer that has nothing to do with what you asked.

Frustrating and part of the problem, rather than the problem solvers they claim to be, how many other 1 star reviews do they need before someone serious starts to investigate THEM?

Very poor service offered by the SRA. It is quite concerning. On the phone for 6 hours with someone telling me the same thing and the issue with my account was still not sorted out. I was told it would be fixed manually on the next day. Nothing was fixed. I drove from Cambridge to the Birmingham offices in a snow storm just to be told something else. I applied for a very simple SQE2 exemption and the response time could be up to 6 months?The service offering to users is non existent. However.....now that I have looked at SRA employee reviews I can understand why this is so....As an employer the SRA only achieved 3.6/5

worrying.
The head Paul Philp of the SRA gave an interview to City Am on the 3rd February 2023. Reading the shocking reviews ,yet to see any evidence of any change. The SRA needs to be accountable or disbanded forthwith . The bad rating on Trust Pilot speaks volumes

The SRA are absolutely useless and allow solicitors to act however they see fit. The legal Ombudsman are the same. They both support their fellow solicitors and when it boils down to the complaints they will say anything and change story’s and documents to suit them. Even when a judge has said on a court transcripts and it written in black-and-white that they are dishonest they say that’s not good enough because it only effects you and not the wider public. The fact that solicitors are protected by the SRA via Insurance policies and then give the SRA payouts to protect their integrity and to keep their good name says it all.
I believe there should be a reform and none solicitors who are specifically trained to deal with this. Fraud should be specially trained to govern them all. I mean they are Literally friends being governing by friends and the wider public are now standing together and saying enough.
The minimum wage is just over £10 an hour And we’ve got solicitors charging us £240 - 400 an hour and for what. To end up with a massive made up bill at the end that you weren’t expecting to get because you wasn’t correctly advised.

Please See this post and read it in full it’s shocking to know that there are solicitors that are in it together to gain and support one another and then they boast about it when someone is vulnerable.

Kerry Underwood
MCKENZIE FRIENDS: AN ABSURD DECISION
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kerryunderwood

In Ravenscroft v Canal and River Trust [2016] EWHC 2282 (Ch)

Chief Master Marsh gave guidance in relation to McKenzie Friends.

He stated that the starting point was to consider whether the applicant reasonably needed such assistance. If so the scope of that assistance should be determined and that required consideration of the applicant’s personal position, the context in which the application was made, the principles in the overriding objective and the guidance in Practice Notes: McKenzie Friends: Civil and Family Courts [2010] 1 WRL 1881.

Here the Master held that it was appropriate to appoint a McKenzie Friend and for him to have rights of advocacy, but that is “an exceptional course of action… only justified by exceptional circumstances”.

The Master said that the permission was not open-ended and could be withdrawn at any time if it was abused or if the McKenzie Friend sought to delay the conduct of the trial.

Here the claimant had difficulty in understanding written material, as well as the technical nature of the case and thus it was reasonable for him to call on assistance. The McKenzie Friend proposed to act free of charge and had already won a similar case when representing himself.

However the McKenzie Friend also had a number of unmet costs orders against him, including ones in favour of the defendant here.

Comment

An absurd decision that comes very close to saying that anyone who needs representation can choose anyone and does not need to have a lawyer.

This representative has ignored costs orders against him and thus can represent people in court but treat court orders that he does not like with impunity.

Such conduct by a solicitor would result in automatic suspension and subsequent striking off.

Here the Master was influenced by the fact that the McKenzie Friend had helped draft the proceedings etc. and that the claim “is in a reasonable shape” and that “my impression of Mr Moore from the three hearings when he has appeared in front of me is that he is capable of acting in a measured and helpful way.”

The logic of this is that if I illegally prescribe medication but it works, then having acted illegally, but reasonably successfully, as a non-qualified doctor, I should be allowed to conduct major surgery. If anyone may now appear as an advocate in a full High Court trial, which this case will be, where the Master accepted that it involved an issue of “real public importance” then what is the point of being a barrister or a solicitor?

Why train? Why qualify? Why insure? Why obey court orders? Why obey the law?

So anyone can now appear in court and ignore court orders as they want.

There will be hearingless Briggs courts. I suppose that stops the problem of McKenzie Friends.

This attitude will lead to the decline of the courts, the rule of law and everyone involved in it.

It is likely to lead to a shortage of lawyers seeking judicial appointments at the sharp end – that is as Deputy District Judges.

Why not just let the courts fall down as well? Saves a few bob.

Absolutely disgraceful the legal ombudsman issues a strike they do nothing

Lord Hope of Craighead - Judicial Fraudster is the title of my factual video that can be found on my you tube channel Where's Walshy In the video I have highlighted the criminal offences committed by the solicitors which the SRA refuse to sanction and in doing so are perverting the course of justice. Which is a stand alone offence that Paul Philip head of the SRA will be jailed for.

My heart goes out to the (close to) 250 reviewers that feel let down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) – an organisation who are supposed to be protecting them. Of course, there will always be detractors on review sites, but not a single person has posted a review to say the SRA has helped them – and that would suggest something is seriously amiss.

Many of the reviews are from people whose lives have been devastated in dealings with rogue SRA regulated solicitors, and I can only imagine how awful it must have been to discover the SRA wouldn’t take action to help them. My story is far less dramatic but I did experience the same worrying lack of support from the SRA.

It began when I signed up to Which? Legal for advice with a tenancy matter and discovered they were providing me with incorrect information. I complained to Which? about this but they simply stated they ‘could have been clearer’ and refused to uphold my complaint. Deciding to pursue them, I was connected with the Head of Legal Operations at Which? Legal – who’s an SRA regulated solicitor. He clearly didn’t want to acknowledge that his legal service had messed up and so he used a gaslighting strategy, by continually downplaying their errors.

Given the Which? ethos is all about protecting consumers, I felt avoiding accountability in this way was appalling behaviour. Eventually, I stopped using their legal service and turned to the charity Shelter for advice, and this is where it became apparent just how badly Which? Legal had got things wrong. So, I decided to write to their Head of Legal Operations, asking why his solicitors hadn’t provided me with the correct advice – which I’d received from Shelter. I'm guessing he realised he'd been caught out but rather than apologise for the errors of his solicitors, he once again gaslighted me – claiming the advice I’d received from Which? Legal was the same as Shelter’s advice. I was well aware this wasn’t true, as I had recordings of all my calls with the Which? Legal solicitors.

Concerned that this SRA regulated solicitor – who’s the most senior member of management at Which? Legal – would be both gaslighting and lying to me, I contacted the SRA to ask if they may be able to help. They informed me this was exactly the sort of issue they can take action with and I was advised to file a report raising concerns about his professional conduct. After spending much time preparing and submitting a report, the SRA responded by telling me they couldn’t investigate, as there was no evidence this Which? Legal solicitor had been lying intentionally. The fact that they weren’t even willing to look into this or question him really surprised me and I rang and asked if I could speak to an SRA manager to discuss this.

Apparently, nobody was available when I rang but I was assured a manger would call me back. They didn't. I’ve now rung the SRA five times, each time being told a manger will return my call, but nobody's ever got back to me. On my most recent call to them, I spoke to a very nice adviser who seemed genuinely sympathetic that this was my fifth attempt to speak to a manger. He told me he would personally contact a manger asking them to call me, but, once again, I never heard from anyone. It seems likely these managers are dropping my messages in the bin.

I understand the SRA are funded by the solicitors they’re supposed to be regulating, so it’s perhaps unsurprising they’re not too keen to hold them to account. It also feels that the whole system is designed to frustrate people so they just give up – as so may Trustpilot reviewers seem to have done. The behaviour of the SRA is shocking and I personally feel it would be better to not have a regulator at all, if they behave in this way. Or, it may not be quite so bad if they were honest and admitted they weren’t interested in helping the public. At least then we'd know where we stand and wouldn’t raise our hopes of getting support that will never come.

UPDATE: Incredibly, within hours of posting this review, the SRA contacted Trustpilot and asked that I take down the names of their two members of staff I'd referred to (now removed). So, they spring into action on Trustpilot when it concerns their staff and yet don't even respond to the masses of Trustpilot reviews from the public, who raise concerns about them. This echoes the way they put their solicitor's interests ahead of ours.

While the SRA may occasionally take action to close down solicitor firms, it's clear they're not supporting the public in the way they should. This whole legal regulation process – which should be protecting us – is broken and it needs exposing in a way which will bring about change. I’m currently exploring options for doing this.

Solicitor kept sending threatening emails saying my late father owed them money, told them for 7 months we did not, only stopped when I found unsigned form saying only start billable work when this is signed. SRA said solicitor did nothing wrong. SRA are nothing more than a circling of the wagons operation for corrupt solicitors. Not fit for purpose.

Whitewashed a complaint about a solicitor working for a local council who was head to toe corrupt & clearly abused his position.

The SRA who supposed to monitor these people seek to close ranks the moment concerns about any solicitor is raised. They contiually side with the person at the centre of the allegations because in their eyes, the solicitor cannot be wrong.

Dont waste your time on these people, like the kangaroo courts they walk around in, they are just plain corrupt.