Redkite Solicitors

Very polite and helpful
Dec 11th, 2020

Positive: Professionalism
Sep 15th, 2020

When my uncle died he set up a trust which was administered by Lowless and Lowless which later became Redkite Law Llp.Two of the partners of Redkite Law,Messrs.T.Hagger and D.Sangster were appointed Trustees on the 21st.February 2013. Following the sale of a house 92,567 was sent to the Trustees on the 13th.May, 2016 for investment.As long ago as 1884 the High Court had ruled that Trustees had to invest money within six months and more recently it has been held professional trustees,such as solicitors,have to invest straightaway.An undated report was obtained from a financial advise in August 2016.One suggested option was to open a deposit account with an investment bank.Nothing was done and the money lay uninvested for nearly a year when on 5th.May,2017,90,000 was used to open a 90 day deposit account paying 1.1%.On the 12th.June a further report was obtained from the same financial adviser which appeared to be cut and pasted from the first report.Messrs.Hagger and Sangster have never explained why they failed to invest the money or apologised for their failure to act as professional trustees.Worse was to follow. The principal beneficiary of the trust was my aunt for whom I held a lasting Power of Attorney.The Trustees raised a bill for 2,,495 plus vat (2,995.18).The bill did not contain a full description of the work done,charging rate or period,although this is a vat requirement.When I queried this the Trustees wrote to me on the 19th.March,2018 informing me they did not consider any further information was required to be produced by themselves.They failed to advise my aunt of her right to have the bill checked by the court under the Solicitors Act. The only solution was to issue proceedings in the Senior Courts Costs Office of the High Court in London.At the preliminary hearing on the 21st.June 2018 the Trustees argued that the application ought to be dismissed,in other words they could charge what they wanted without explanation.The Costs Judge referred to an earlier court ruling where solicitors had been ordered to deliver a properly detailed bill in order to enable the recipient to judge whether the bill was fair or not and that the same reasoning applied to the Trustees/Redkite Law in this case. I had never heard of Redkite Law before and for my own peace of mind will fortunately never have to deal with them again.
Mar 13th, 2019