High Court Rejects Solicitor’s Late Appeal Against SRA Disciplinary Decision

What did the High Court decide?

In Zeeshan Mian v Solicitors Regulation Authority Limited [2026] EWHC 2867 (Admin), handed down on 6 November 2026, Robert Palmer KC, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court, refused Mr Mian’s application for an extension of time to appeal against an SDT determination dated 15 January 2020.

The SDT had fined Mr Mian £20,000, imposed conditions on his future practice for two years and ordered him to pay £25,000 in costs. The appeal was brought under section 49 of the Solicitors Act 1974, but the ordinary 21-day appeal period had expired on 6 February 2020. The judge described the delay as more than five and a half years and found no proper basis for extending the deadline.

The judge went further. He held that, even if an extension had been granted, the appeal would have been dismissed on its merits. The SRA had lawfully referred the allegations to the SDT, and the Tribunal had jurisdiction to determine them and impose sanctions.

What were the allegations against the solicitor?

The disciplinary proceedings concerned two main areas of conduct at Denning Solicitors, the firm established by Mr Mian in 2008.

The first concerned an individual identified in the SDT proceedings as “SAH”, whom Mr Mian employed as a consultant after apparently accepting his claim that he was a qualified barrister. Mr Mian allowed SAH to exercise rights of audience before the High Court on two occasions in 2014. In fact, SAH had been disbarred in June 2011 following a fraud conviction. The judgment records that Mr Mian had not carried out the necessary identity and authorisation checks.

The second allegation concerned the firm’s client account and a property investment scheme operated by a company anonymised as “Client E”. Investors were directed to transfer money into the firm’s client account under arrangements connected with property bonds. The firm retained 9 per cent of each investment and transferred the balance to Client E after carrying out checks. The SDT found that there was no meaningful connection between the legal work performed by the firm and the individual investment payments, and that the client account had been used as a banking facility.

The SDT found breaches of the SRA’s professional principles and conduct requirements, including the obligation to maintain public trust and the prohibition on providing banking facilities through a client account. The underlying factual matters had not been contested by Mr Mian before the Tribunal.

• 2014 The SRA received a report concerning the employment of SAH and opened an investigation.
• 2015 A further investigation began concerning the Client E investment arrangements. A forensic investigation report addressed both matters.
• September 2016 The SRA imposed conditions on Mr Mian’s practising certificate. An adjudication panel upheld the conditions and added a further condition in November 2016.
• 27 March 2018 An authorised officer decided that the allegations should be referred to the SDT.
• 15 January 2020 The SDT issued its determination, imposing a £20,000 fine, two years of practice conditions and £25,000 in costs.
• 6 November 2026 The High Court refused the application to extend time and concluded that the referral and SDT proceedings were lawful.

Why was the SRA’s referral challenged?

Mr Mian argued that the SRA had already concluded its investigations when it imposed conditions on his practising certificate in 2016. He said that the SRA had treated those conditions as the final outcome of the complaints and could not later reopen the same matters by referring them to the SDT.

He relied on internal SRA documents disclosed to him in 2025, including emails recording the closure of a forensic investigation file, administrative closure validation forms and an internal memorandum dated 12 March 2018. He argued that the documents showed that the 2014 and 2015 investigations had been closed before the disciplinary referral was made. On that basis, he contended that the SRA lacked authority to refer the allegations and that principles including cause of action estoppel and issue estoppel prevented further proceedings.

The SRA’s position was that the practising certificate conditions had been imposed to manage immediate regulatory risks and protect the public, not to determine disciplinary liability. It also argued that the closure of particular administrative files did not mean that the underlying matters had been abandoned. The investigations had been considered together, and the decision whether to bring disciplinary proceedings remained outstanding.

The High Court accepted the SRA’s distinction between regulatory and disciplinary functions. Under section 13A of the Solicitors Act 1974 and the relevant practising regulations, conditions could be imposed to protect the public and the reputation of the profession. They were not punitive sanctions and did not determine whether misconduct had occurred. The SRA’s separate disciplinary powers under Part II of the Act, including the power to refer serious matters to the SDT under section 47, remained available.

“The imposition of such conditions is not a punishment and in no way pre-judges the result of the hearing before the SDT.”

— The judgment, referring to the Court of Appeal’s decision in Awan v Law Society

The judge also rejected the argument that administrative file closures had legally ended the investigations. The forensic team’s file had been closed because its report was complete and had been passed to the regulatory supervisor. Other file entries reflected the consolidation of related matters. The February 2016 case note, in particular, recorded plans both to impose immediate practising certificate conditions and to start disciplinary proceedings in respect of the identified breaches.

The court found no evidence that the SRA had decided to take no further disciplinary action. The March 2018 memorandum asked the Disciplinary Proceedings Team to consider authorising proceedings in relation to the matters raised by the earlier investigations. The fact that the issues were being managed under consolidated administrative references did not remove the SRA’s statutory powers.

Why did the application to extend time fail?

The judge applied the approach to out-of-time appeals set out in Taylor v SRA [2019] EWHC 201 (Admin), together with the principles in Denton v TH White Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 906. The court had to consider the seriousness and significance of the delay, the reason for the default and all the circumstances relevant to dealing with the application justly.

The delay was substantial: the appeal deadline expired on 6 February 2020, while the appeal was not filed until 2025. The judge found that the jurisdiction argument was already known to Mr Mian and had been raised in his written Answer to the SRA’s case before the SDT in September 2019. However, the Tribunal recorded that he did not pursue the point at the hearing and did not invite it to determine the issue.

The judge also took account of the fact that Mr Mian had agreed a statement of facts and proposed outcome with the SRA before the SDT hearing, admitting most of the allegations. The SDT’s determination reflected that the jurisdiction point had not been pursued. If he considered that the Tribunal had failed to address a fundamental issue, the judge said, he could have appealed within the prescribed 21-day period.

The later disclosure of internal documents in June and August 2025 did not provide a sufficient explanation for the delay. The court noted that Mr Mian had been making the argument about the earlier investigations being closed since 2018, and that he had not pursued further disclosure after the SDT determination for a period between 2021 and 2025.

Nor did the disclosed documents establish an arguable basis for saying that the SRA’s referral had been unlawful. The practising certificate conditions were regulatory rather than disciplinary; the administrative file closures did not end the investigations; and the statutory scheme did not prevent a referral to the SDT after conditions had been imposed. The judge also rejected the argument that the SRA’s actions gave rise to cause of action or issue estoppel, because it was exercising regulatory functions rather than finally adjudicating a dispute between two parties.

The judge concluded that there was no proper basis to extend time by five and a half years. He admitted the evidence relied on by the parties only to the extent necessary to consider the extension application, but refused that application.

What does the judgment mean for solicitors and the SRA?

The judgment reinforces the distinction between interim or protective regulatory action and disciplinary proceedings. Conditions on a practising certificate may be imposed to manage risk to clients, the public and the reputation of the profession. Their imposition does not, without more, amount to a final disciplinary determination or prevent the regulator from pursuing a separate disciplinary route.

It also makes clear that administrative case-management records must be read in context. The closure of a forensic team’s file or the consolidation of investigation references does not necessarily mean that the regulator has decided to end the investigation or take no further action.

For solicitors considering an appeal against an SDT decision, the ruling is a reminder of the importance of the 21-day deadline. A point raised in written submissions but not pursued at the hearing may be difficult to revive years later, particularly where the party had an opportunity to appeal when the Tribunal’s determination was handed down.

On the facts of this case, the High Court concluded that the SRA’s referral was lawful and that the SDT had full jurisdiction to determine the allegations and make the orders it considered appropriate. The judge did not separately review the appropriateness or proportionality of the sanctions because Mr Mian did not advance a distinct challenge to them on that basis.