The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has fined Taylor Rose more than £160,000 for compliance failures including failing to return client money promptly.
The SRA directed the firm to pay a financial penalty of £160,059, with costs of £1,350.
The regulator said it had fined the firm for failing to have effective systems and controls in place to ensure that it complied with the SRA’s regulatory requirements, failing to report possible serious breaches and failing to return client money to clients promptly.
A financial penalty of between 0.2% and 0.3% of the firm’s annual domestic turnover was “an appropriate and proportionate sanction”, the SRA said.
The SRA began a forensic investigation into Taylor Rose in August 2023, during which it found that the firm’s main client bank account had not been fully reconciled every five weeks, that the reconciliation for that account completed on 31 July 2023 contained a significant number of unreconciled items and that these had increased every month since April 2022 and had been carried over into subsequent months.
It found that from approximately June 2018 to August 2025, Taylor Rose had failed to promptly return client money to clients.
It also found that the firm’s conduct “continued for longer than was reasonable”.
The financial penalty was reduced by 30%, the SRA said, to reflect the firm’s co-operation with their investigation; admissions it made during that investigation and the efforts it made to remedy the breaches. It said Taylor Rose had apologised, shown insight and remorse and undertook remedial action.
In a statement, Taylor Rose attributed the issues to the acquisitions of Breeze & Wyles and McMillan Williams, both of which had entered administration.
A spokesperson for Taylor Rose said: “While the issues predominantly stem from cases taken on with acquisitions of other firms between 2018 and 2020, we fully accept that we didn’t adequately deal with these issues at the time, partially due to a number of external factors impacting the capacity of our finance team. They have now been fully resolved, and we have since put robust procedures in place to ensure strong governance of these matters.”
