Section 90 Enforcement: Last-Minute Assurances Do Not Displace Proven Non-Compliance with Regulatory Directions

1. Introduction

This judgment concerns the High Court’s enforcement of directions made following a complaint to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority. The respondent solicitor had been directed to release a client’s file and waive any fees otherwise payable. Despite repeated correspondence, she had not complied when the Authority’s application under section 90 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 came before the Court.

On the hearing date, the respondent offered to comply within two weeks and sought withdrawal of the application. Her office subsequently requested an adjournment by email, but no application for an adjournment was made before the Court. The Court proceeded, ordered compliance by the date proposed by the respondent, and awarded the Authority its costs.

The decision principally reinforces the practical operation of an existing statutory enforcement mechanism rather than announcing a wholly new legal test. Its central message is that established non-compliance, following sustained regulatory engagement, can justify an enforceable court order notwithstanding a last-minute promise to comply.

2. Background and Procedural History

The client’s complaint

The client had instructed the respondent in 2019 to obtain hospital medical records following the death of her baby. In January 2024, she complained to the Authority that the respondent had failed to answer communications and had not released her file. The respondent maintained that fees were outstanding; the client disputed any liability for fees.

The judgment records an almost complete failure by the respondent to answer the Authority’s correspondence, interrupted only by sporadic communications. The respondent sometimes attributed non-receipt to a change of practice premises. The Court found that explanation difficult to accept because correspondence had been sent both by post and by email.

The Complaints Committee’s directions

The Authority’s Complaints Committee sought information before determining the complaint. On 2 October 2025, it required a response within 21 days. The respondent did not supply the requested information, indicating instead that files needed to be retrieved from storage. The Committee considered that response inadequate, particularly because the respondent had known about the complaint since January 2024 without addressing its substance.

The Committee upheld the complaint, finding that the services provided were of an inadequate standard to a substantial degree. It directed the respondent, within 21 days of the direction issuing, to:

• hand over the client’s file; and
• waive all fees otherwise payable by the client.

Those directions were communicated by email and registered post. The Authority and its solicitors, Fieldfisher LLP, sent further correspondence warning of High Court enforcement proceedings. No response was received to those communications, and the client confirmed in February 2026 that the respondent had not contacted her following the Committee’s direction.

The enforcement application

The Authority issued its application on 9 September 2026. Service was established by affidavit. On the morning of the hearing, the respondent’s office promised to furnish the file by 16 November 2026 and indicated agreement to waive the fees, asking whether the application would be withdrawn.

The Authority declined to withdraw without actual compliance. It nevertheless stated that it would not oppose an application by the respondent for an adjournment. The respondent’s office then explained that she had other court commitments and asked by email whether the matter could be adjourned for a week. No adjournment application was made before the Court.

3. Summary of the Judgment

The Court considered it appropriate to determine the application that day. It criticised the respondent’s decision to prioritise other court commitments over proceedings seeking serious orders against her and emphasised the history of repeated non-engagement with both the client and the Authority.

Finding clear non-compliance, the Court made an order under section 90(1) of the 2015 Act and Order 84B of the Rules of the Superior Courts 1986, as amended. The respondent was required to comply with the directions communicated in the Authority’s letter of 13 November 2025:

• release the client’s file pursuant to section 71(5)(d); and
• waive all fees otherwise payable pursuant to section 71(5)(c)(i).

Compliance was required by 16 November 2026, reflecting the respondent’s own proposed date. The Authority also received its costs, to be adjudicated if the parties could not agree them.

4. Precedents and Legal Materials

No individual precedents cited

The judgment cites no individual judicial decisions. Its reasoning therefore does not depend on applying or distinguishing named precedents. Instead, it rests on the statutory framework, the documented history of non-compliance, and the Court’s assessment of the circumstances surrounding the hearing.

The President referred to his previous observations in the relevant court list that failures to respond to the Authority would not be tolerated. Those remarks reinforce the regulatory importance of engagement, but the judgment does not identify an earlier case or formulate a separate precedent from it.

The statutory framework

The former disciplinary regime

The Court observed that, under the previous regime governed by the Solicitors Acts, such non-engagement could well have constituted professional misconduct. This was a contextual warning, not a separate finding of professional misconduct under the current legislation. The distinction matters: the application before the Court concerned enforcement of existing directions.

5. Analysis of the Court’s Reasoning

Enforcement, rather than reconsideration of the complaint

The decisive issue was whether the respondent had complied with the directions already made. The Court did not undertake a fresh assessment of the adequacy of the original legal services or determine whether fees had initially been contractually due. The operative position was that the Committee had upheld the complaint and directed release of the file and waiver of fees, yet those directions remained unfulfilled.

The case consequently illustrates the distinction between regulatory decision-making and judicial enforcement. The Committee determined the complaint and the appropriate directions; the High Court supplied an enforceable order requiring compliance.

A promise was not performance

The respondent’s hearing-day email acknowledged that the required steps could be taken, but did not establish that they had been taken. Against the prolonged history of unanswered correspondence, the Authority declined to treat an assurance as a substitute for compliance, and the Court proceeded to make the order.

That conclusion should not be overstated as a universal rule that undertakings or proposed compliance dates can never justify an adjournment. Here, the Authority had expressly indicated that it would not oppose an adjournment application. The significance lies in the combination of established default, repeated opportunities to engage, and the absence of an application before the Court.

Informal correspondence did not resolve the hearing

The respondent’s office requested an adjournment from the Authority’s solicitors, but that exchange did not itself adjourn the proceedings. The Court treated the application as remaining before it for determination.

The practical lesson is procedural as well as regulatory: a party seeking to defer listed enforcement proceedings cannot assume that correspondence with the opposing solicitor has secured that result. The judgment does not, however, establish a general rule governing every request for an adjournment made in a party’s absence.

Engagement with the regulator is a professional imperative

The Court expressly characterised engagement with the Authority as a “professional imperative”. Regulatory correspondence is not merely optional administrative communication. A complaints system depends on practitioners providing information and responding to directions so that complaints can be resolved effectively.

The repeated failures here also affected a client seeking a file connected with deeply sensitive circumstances. Although the Court did not award compensation or determine any underlying medical claim, that context helps explain the seriousness attached to the continued withholding of the file.

A firm but practical compliance deadline

The Court adopted 16 November 2026, the respondent’s own proposed date, rather than requiring immediate delivery. It therefore accommodated the stated timetable while declining to leave compliance dependent on an unenforced assurance. This combined practical implementation with judicial compulsion.

Why costs followed

The costs award rested on the Authority’s extensive attempts to obtain compliance and the expense of bringing proceedings, including proving service. The Court stressed that those costs could have been avoided.

It also identified a regulatory funding consideration: without an order against the respondent, other members of the profession would bear the expense generated by her default. The award therefore placed the financial consequences of avoidable enforcement on the practitioner whose non-compliance had made it necessary. No fixed sum was specified; adjudication would follow if agreement proved impossible.

6. Potential Impact and Limits

The judgment provides a clear practical warning to legal practitioners: delayed engagement shortly before a hearing may neither prevent an enforcement order nor avoid liability for costs. Regulators may also draw support from the Court’s willingness to proceed where directions remain outstanding despite repeated notification and opportunities to comply.

Its wider significance nevertheless remains bounded by the issues actually decided:

• It does not establish that every delayed response automatically amounts to professional misconduct.
• It does not determine the general law governing a solicitor’s right to retain a file for unpaid fees.
• It does not impose suspension, strike-off, or a separate misconduct sanction.
• It does not hold that every assurance of future compliance must be rejected.

Its strongest precedential value concerns section 90 enforcement in circumstances of clear, sustained non-compliance and inadequate procedural engagement.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Section 90 enforcement

A statutory route by which the Authority obtained a High Court order requiring the solicitor to carry out directions that remained unfulfilled.

Fee waiver

Giving up any entitlement to fees otherwise payable. The order did not require the Court to decide whether the disputed fees had originally been owed.

Adjournment

Postponement of a hearing. Asking the opposing solicitor for a postponement did not itself change the listed hearing date.

Costs adjudicated in default of agreement

The respondent must pay the Authority’s recoverable legal costs, with the amount determined through the costs adjudication process if agreement cannot be reached.

Ex tempore judgment

A judgment delivered orally at the hearing. The supplied text is the approved version of that judgment.

8. Conclusion

The decision confirms the practical force of the 2015 Act’s enforcement machinery. On the facts, a late promise did not displace the need for an order compelling release of the client’s file and waiver of fees.

Its broader message is straightforward: practitioners must engage with their regulator, comply with operative directions, and properly address pending court proceedings. Where sustained default makes enforcement necessary, the resulting costs may fall on the practitioner rather than the profession generally.