An independent review of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)’s regulation of the SSB Group [PDF] has led to the Legal Services Board (LSB) initiating enforcement action. The LSB will seek improvements from the SRA to better protect consumers and the public.
SSB was a law firm based in Sheffield that acted for thousands of clients in civil litigation claims. When it entered administration in January 2024, its debts exceeded £200 million. These had mostly arisen from litigation funding loans which SSB took out to fund high-volume claims, often relating to alleged defects in the installation of cavity wall insulation.
Many of SSB’s former clients were later pursued for substantial legal costs, despite the “no-win no-fee” assurances they had been given. SSB’s poor conduct in handling their cases led to severe financial and personal hardships, and many are still dealing with the uncertainty and consequences of the firm’s failings.
The LSB commissioned Carson McDowell LLP, a Northern Ireland firm of solicitors not regulated by the SRA, to review whether the SRA acted effectively and efficiently on reports it received about SSB’s conduct of cavity wall insulation claims and its financial management. The SSB Victims’ Support Group gave testimony of the impact of regulatory failures on clients.
The review found that:
- the SRA did not act effectively or efficiently in its handling of more than 100 reports relating to SSB over the period under review (January 2019 to March 2024)
- the SRA did not take all the steps it could have taken in response to the reports
- the SRA’s failures meant it did not adequately protect consumers, the public interest, or professional standards. Changes to its procedures are needed to mitigate the possibility of a similar situation arising again.
The LSB Board endorsed the report and its findings. In light of the impact on the achievement of the regulatory objectives set out in the Legal Services Act, the Board decided to initiate action in accordance with its enforcement policy. Having considered all the options available to it, the Board agreed to combine and initiate the statutory processes under the Act for two sanctions: a public censure under section 35 of the Act and performance targets and monitoring under section 31 of the Act.
Catherine Brown, interim Chair of the Legal Services Board, said:
“The former clients of SSB have suffered profound emotional and financial harm. There were several early warning signs about the firm, but this review reveals that the SRA failed to act on these. In the Board’s view, these shortcomings allowed SSB to cause further harm to its clients and weakened trust and confidence in the regulation of legal services.
“The action we are initiating reflects the scale of the human impact and the importance of holding regulators to account.
“I would like to thank the SSB Victim’s Group for sharing their experiences with us and Carson McDowell.
“Regulation plays a vital role in protecting consumers and building public confidence in a strong legal services sector. The SRA must sharpen its approach to assessing the reports it receives about solicitors or firms. It must then take quick and decisive action when it is clear – as it was in the case of SSB – that action is needed.
“The SRA has accepted the recommendations of this report. We welcome its engagement during the review and the steps it begun to take to address these issues. The action we have now initiated is intended to complement the action we took following the Axiom report last year, which led to the issuing of Directions.”
The LSB will now act in accordance with the statutory processes applicable under the Act and will not comment further until their conclusion.
Notes
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulates solicitors in England and Wales.
- The SRA in discharging its functions has an obligation to act in a manner, so far as is reasonably practicable, which is compatible with the regulatory objectives in Section 1 of the Legal Services Act 2007.
- The SRA independently exercises regulatory functions delegated to it by the Law Society under the Act and LSB Internal Governance Rules, which preserves the independent regulation by the SRA. The Law Society has had no direct involvement in the events subject of the review or the SRA’s discharge of its delegated regulatory functions.
- The report concludes that the SRA failed to act in a manner compatible with the following objectives:
- (a) protecting and promoting the public interest
- (c) improving access to justice
- (d) protecting and promoting the interests of consumers
- (h) promoting and maintaining adherence to the professional principles. The “professional principles” include that authorised persons should “act with independence and integrity”, “maintain proper standards of work” and “act in the best interests of their clients.”
- Sections 31 and 35 of the Act set out the applicable statutory processes. The SRA and the Law Society as approved regulator will have opportunities to make representations before any final decision is taken as to whether a statement of censure and performance targets and monitoring should be imposed, and if so, in what terms.
- Performance targets, if imposed, will require the SRA to take specific actions against targets to address the failings highlighted in the report, subject to close monitoring by the LSB. A censure, if imposed, will formally draw attention to the specific failures identified in the report and is intended to be a catalyst for behaviour change that leads to improved performance.
- The LSB’s action follows the separate directions that it set for the SRA (published in May 2025) in response to a previous independent report into the regulatory events leading up to the SRA’s intervention into the firm Axiom Ince Limited.