Further to your article ‘Call for ABS complaints data after fund rebuff’ in last week’s edition, I wanted to clarify the Law Society’s position on this issue, which was misrepresented in the article, and highlight further developments on this topic.

Rather than specifically calling for a separate compensation fund for alternative business structures, we were asking for the thorough review of the issue which the Solicitors Regulation Authority promised parliament it would undertake by December 2012. This has not happened to date and we accept the reasons why this is the case. However, we want a review to take place as soon as possible and for the SRA to collect the information it needs to facilitate this.

For the review to be effective the SRA must collect relevant data on the size and types of all firms and work areas that give rise to claims on the fund, and not only data on ABSs, as the article appeared to suggest. The Society wished to satisfy itself that the SRA has sufficient processes in place to collect this data now, so it can conduct a proper review in the near future.

It is worth noting that the urgent need for review of the fund is being echoed in parliament, where in a recent debate there was broad agreement with the Law Society’s view that the SRA should undertake this work as soon as possible.

Elliott Vigar, Head of regulation, the Law Society