15 Solicitors sanctioned for failing to pay insurance premiums
Fifteen solicitors have had sanctions imposed by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for failing to pay insurance premiums while their firms were in the assigned risks pool, reports Legal Futures. Five principals have been suspended indefinitely by the SDT. The Tribunal recommended that the suspensions should not be lifted until full payment of the outstanding premiums […]
FSA approves first regulated residential property fund
Hearthstone Investments, the specialist residential fund manager, has received FSA approval to launch the UK’s first regulated residential property fund. The TM Hearthstone UK Residential Property Fund is due to soft launch this summer. A full roll-out is planned for September 2012. This will give investors for the first time access to a £4trn […]
Plainlaw becomes sixth ABS to be licensed by SRA
A property law firm based in Oxfordshire has become the sixth alternative business structure to be licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Plainlaw is a firm which specialises in the areas of property, housing and construction law. There are three partners, Philip Horn, Michael Horn and a corporate entity, Plainlaw.biz Ltd. The senior partner is […]
Law Society call for post six-year run-off extension is partially heard
Calls by the Law Society for the SRA to extend the scheme that provides solicitors’ professional indemnity insurance post six-year run-off cover have been heard. The SRA Board approved the proposals made by the Law Society to introduce rules to extend the scheme, but didn’t follow the suggestion of putting a cap of £10 […]
The inevitable development of IT hosting within the Legal Sector
The latest smartlegal whitepaper explores the cloud computing revolution within legal services. It is available here. The paper is written by Bill Kirby, director of Professional Choice Consultancy, and looks at the issues surrounding cloud computing and what it means for law firms. Important things to consider when looking at cloud computing include: […]
Head of fraud and security at Lloyds charged with £2.5 million fraud
A former head of fraud and security for digital banking at Lloyds Banking Group has been charged in connection with a £2.5 million fraud. Andrew Penhale, from the Crown Prosecution Services’ central fraud group, commented: “The charge relates to an allegation that between 1 September 2008 and 21 December 2011, Jessica Harper dishonestly and […]
London market pushes house prices up by 0.2%
The Hometrack monthly national house price survey has been released today, and shows a national price rise of 0.2% over the last month. This increase has been pushed up by the performance of London. London saw house prices rise by 0.6% over the last month. In the South East and East Anglia there were increases […]
Legal Ombudsman discusses complaint volumes
The Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson has used his blog to look at the volume of complaints seen by the Legal Ombudsman. He looked in particular at two statistics which he says are on the face of things contradictory. The first statistic is the Ombudsman is waiving more case fees than anticipated. The Ombudsman will waive […]
UK annual flooding losses set to reach £1 billion
Research by property search firm Searchflow shows that the annual cost of flooding in England and Wales has reached £1 billion as a result of underinvestment in defences and climate change. The cost of individual major flooding events is rising. The Environment Agency states that a major coastal flooding event in the Humber estuary could […]