Investigating the CEDR: How the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution Failed to Hold the SRA Accountable

Why this review matters

The SRA complaints process has an internal service-complaint route and an independent review stage. The independent review stage is not a new disciplinary investigation into the solicitor or firm. It is a review of how the SRA handled the service complaint. That boundary is important because it affects what a complainant can realistically expect from the process.

The source draft says the complainant reported Burnetts Solicitors to the SRA after the firm had previously prepared his will and later acted for his landlord in a dispute affecting his business. The draft describes that sequence as a clear conflict of interest and says the SRA concluded that no wrongdoing had occurred. It then says the CEDR stage 3 review failed to correct the SRA's earlier complaint-handling failures.

Those are serious allegations. They should not be presented as findings without the underlying complaint file, SRA stage 1 and stage 2 responses, the stage 3 review outcome, the will retainer documents, the landlord dispute correspondence and the conflict-check evidence. The article therefore frames the matter as a review-quality problem: whether the independent reviewer engaged with the key issues the complainant says were put forward.

The public-confidence issue is simple. If an independent review cannot overturn a regulatory decision, it must still show that it understood the complaint about the way the decision was reached. Otherwise the complainant receives a final process outcome, but not necessarily an answer to the complaint about process.

What the review could decide

The review route needed disciplined boundaries. The SRA's complaints policy says the Independent Reviewer of Complaints is not an SRA employee and makes decisions independently. It also says the reviewer cannot review or overturn SRA regulatory decisions, and instead considers how the SRA handled the service complaint at stages 1 and 2.

That does not make the stage 3 review meaningless. It changes the question. The reviewer is not deciding whether Burnetts committed misconduct. The reviewer is deciding whether the SRA handled the service complaint properly when the complainant challenged the way the SRA had dealt with the report.

This distinction protects both sides. It stops complainants expecting a stage 3 reviewer to do work the reviewer cannot lawfully do. It also stops regulators avoiding accountability for poor complaint handling by saying, too broadly, that the reviewer cannot revisit the regulatory decision.

The complaint context

The source draft contains several linked allegations. It says the complainant instructed Burnetts in early 2022 to prepare a will and that the will identified the business as an important inheritance asset. It then says Burnetts later represented the landlord in a dispute affecting the same business premises. The draft says this created a conflict and that the SRA failed to investigate it adequately.

The draft also contains allegations about the landlord dispute itself, including alleged fabrication of forfeiture, alleged misrepresentation of facts, alleged failure to follow practice direction, alleged use of business premises and stock as leverage, alleged denial of access while future rent was demanded, and alleged unjust enrichment. Those are highly contested civil and professional-conduct allegations. They require primary documents and, in some respects, may sit outside a service-complaint review.

The stage 3 review question was therefore not simply whether the reviewer agreed with the complainant. The better question was whether the reviewer separated the strands properly. A conflict and confidentiality complaint about a former client relationship is one strand. A service complaint about the SRA's reasoning is another. A landlord and tenant dispute about possession, forfeiture, lockout or rent is another. A civil claim about loss is another again.

The concern is that a stage 3 review can become superficial if it collapses those strands into a single conclusion. A complaint can be outside the reviewer's power in one respect and still reveal a service-handling problem in another. The reviewer needed to identify which points were outside remit, which points went to SRA service, and which points required an answer about whether the SRA had considered relevant facts.

The questions the review had to answer

A robust stage 3 review should be capable of answering practical questions in plain language. Those questions do not assume Burnetts, the SRA or CEDR acted wrongly. They test whether the review did the work the process required.

Those questions would have given the complaint structure. They would also have reduced the risk of overstatement. The public-interest criticism becomes sharper when it is tied to the reviewer's stated remit rather than to a demand that the reviewer decide every disputed allegation.

The reform point

The reform needed in cases like this is not that every complainant should win at stage 3. That would be unrealistic and wrong. The reform is that stage 3 decisions should be route-disciplined, evidence-led and explicit about what has been reviewed.

Where a complaint alleges that the SRA ignored evidence, the reviewer should say what evidence was relevant to the service complaint, what was considered, what was outside remit and why the conclusion was or was not properly explained. Where a complaint mixes regulatory, civil and service issues, the reviewer should separate them rather than letting one category obscure the others.

That is how public trust is protected. Independence is not proved by the label attached to a reviewer. It is proved by method: clear issue definition, visible engagement with the material, transparent limits of remit and reasons that a complainant can understand even when the outcome is adverse.