This briefing is general guidance, current at the time of writing. It is not legal advice. The Transparency Rules are periodically revised, and the exact clause numbering and scope can change, so verify anything load-bearing against the current published rules and with your firm’s COLP before you rely on it.
The SRA Transparency Rules are one of the few compliance obligations a solicitor discharges almost entirely through the website. There is no form to file and no return to submit. The firm publishes the required information on its own site, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority checks it by browsing that site, through thematic reviews, reports of non-compliance, and periodic web sweeps. If the information is missing, buried, or wrong, that is what the reviewer sees.
This briefing sets out what the rules require: which work is in scope, what must be published for it, and the complaints and regulatory information that sits alongside. It is written for the person who has to make the firm’s website satisfy the rules, not skim past them.
What the Transparency Rules are
The Transparency Rules are a short set of rules issued under the SRA Standards and Regulations. They apply to authorised bodies, that is, SRA-regulated firms. In broad terms they require a firm to publish, on its website, price information for certain listed services, the firm’s complaints procedure, and specified regulatory information including the firm’s SRA number and the SRA’s digital badge. A firm that has no website must make the same information available on request.
The rules took effect in December 2018 and have been reviewed and updated by the SRA since, most recently with refreshed guidance and resources. Because the wording is revised from time to time, this briefing describes the substance and flags where a firm should check the current text rather than relying on a rule number quoted here.
Which work is in scope for price publication
This is the part firms most often get wrong, in both directions: publishing prices they do not need to, or omitting a service that is squarely in scope. Price publication is required only for the specific services the rules list, and only where the firm offers that work to the public.
For work provided to individuals, the listed services are:
- Residential conveyancing - freehold and leasehold sales and purchases, and mortgages or re-mortgages of a home.
- Uncontested probate where all the assets are in the UK - the administration of an estate after a death, where the matter is not contested.
- Immigration - preparing and submitting an immigration application, excluding asylum.
- Immigration and asylum representation before the First-tier Tribunal, again with the specific carve-outs the rules set out.
- Motoring offences - advice and representation in the magistrates’ court for summary road-traffic offences.
- Employment-tribunal claims brought by an employee for unfair or wrongful dismissal.
For work provided to businesses, the listed services are:
- Employment-tribunal claims for unfair or wrongful dismissal, where the firm acts for the employer defending the claim.
- Debt recovery up to £100,000.
- Licensing applications for business premises.
If a firm does not offer a listed service, it does not need to publish a price for it. If it does offer one, the price information is mandatory. The exact scope wording (including the precise carve-outs on immigration and asylum) is set out in the current rules, and that is where to confirm a borderline case rather than relying on a summary.
What the price information must contain
For each in-scope service, the rules require more than a headline number. The published information must include, in substance:
- The total cost of the service, or, where that is not practicable, the average cost or a realistic range of costs.
- The basis of the charge - a fixed fee, or an hourly rate, and if hourly, the rate.
- A description of, and the cost of, likely disbursements (for example HM Land Registry fees, search fees, court fees), and whether VAT applies to each.
- Whether VAT is payable, and the amount, on the firm’s fees and on disbursements where it applies.
- A description of the service, including what is and is not included.
- The key stages of the matter and typical timescales.
- The qualifications and experience of the people who will carry out the work, and of their supervisors.
- For conditional-fee or damages-based arrangements, the circumstances in which the client may have to make payments.
The guiding idea is that a prospective client should be able to understand, before they instruct, roughly what the work will cost, what they get for it, and how long it will take. A single figure with no basis, no disbursements, and no timescale does not meet that bar.
The complaints information
Alongside price, the rules require the firm to publish its complaints handling procedure. That includes how and when a client can complain, and, crucially, how and when a complaint can be made to the Legal Ombudsman and to the SRA. In practice this means naming the Legal Ombudsman, giving its contact route, and setting out the time limits within which a complaint may be brought to it, together with the route for reporting a firm’s conduct to the SRA.
The complaints page is a frequent weak point. It is often a single dense paragraph at the foot of an “About” page, with no Legal Ombudsman detail and no time limits. The rules expect it to be published clearly, as information a client can actually find and use.
The regulatory information: SRA number and digital badge
The rules also require the firm to display, in a prominent place on its website, its SRA number and the SRA’s digital badge - the clickable logo that lets a visitor verify the firm’s regulated status directly with the SRA. Separately, the firm’s letterhead and emails must show its SRA authorisation number and the words “authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority”. The digital badge has its own detail, covered in the SRA clickable digital badge briefing.
Where the rules are actually read
The single most important thing to understand about the Transparency Rules is where they are checked. They are not read against the firm’s internal records or a compliance file. They are read against the public website. A reviewer opens the homepage, follows the navigation, and marks each requirement present or absent. So the implementation question is not “do we have this information somewhere” but “is it published, clearly, where a browser and a reviewer will find it”.
That has three practical consequences:
- Each in-scope service wants its own indexable page, not a single buried PDF. A
/residential-conveyancing-feespage, a/probate-feespage, and so on, each carrying the required elements as clear headings. - The complaints procedure wants a discrete, linked page - reached by a footer link that says “Complaints”, not hidden inside a general terms page.
- The SRA number and digital badge want to be in the footer of every page, not only the homepage, so the prominence requirement is satisfied wherever the reviewer lands.
How a regulated-grade estate handles this
Custodiance runs a firm’s web and email estate as a managed, in-jurisdiction service, and the Transparency Rules pages are part of that estate rather than a one-off content job. The structural work, the discrete fee pages, the complaints page with the Legal Ombudsman detail and time limits, the regulatory footer carrying the SRA number and digital badge, and the machine-readable markup that lets a reviewer verify each element in a browser, is built and then maintained as the rules and the firm’s service list evolve. The accuracy of the numbers on each fee page is a content exercise the firm leads on; the templates, the publication discipline, and the prominence are held on the firm’s behalf.
This is the floor of a Growth engagement (£1,495/mo). Where a firm wants a fractional CTO owning the wider compliance posture and roadmap across several sites, that is an Embedded engagement (from £6,000/mo, bespoke).
Frequently asked questions
We only do a little conveyancing. Do we still have to publish prices?
If you offer residential conveyancing to the public, it is in scope and the price information is required, regardless of how much of your work it makes up. The rules key off whether you offer a listed service, not what share of the practice it represents.
Does the price have to be a single fixed figure?
No. The rules accept the total cost, or, where a single total is not practicable, an average or a realistic range, together with the basis of the charge. What they do not accept is a bare number with no basis, no disbursements, and no VAT position. The point is that a client can understand the likely cost before instructing.
What if we do not have a website at all?
The rules cater for that. A firm without a website must make the same information available on request. In practice almost every firm has a website, and for those the information must be published on it.
How does the SRA actually check this?
By reading the public website. The SRA has confirmed it monitors compliance through thematic reviews, reports of non-compliance, and web sweeps of firms’ sites. There is no submission; the website is the submission.
Where this fits
The digital badge that the regulatory information requires is covered in the SRA clickable digital badge briefing. The confidentiality and data-protection duties that sit underneath every enquiry form and upload on the same site are in client confidentiality and data protection for law firms, and the residency posture that keeps all of it defensible is in the sovereign, compliant law-firm website. The cornerstone analysis of where agency-built solicitor sites fail is why your UK law firm’s website probably fails SRA confidentiality, and the rule-by-rule markup detail is in the SRA Transparency Rules website checklist. The published posture behind all of it, including the documented sub-processor list and the in-jurisdiction position, is the Custodiance framework, and the overview for firms is Custodiance for law firms. When a firm is ready, the next step is to request a scoping call.
Sources & methodology
Scope and content facts are drawn from the current published SRA Transparency Rules and the SRA’s price-transparency guidance and Q&A. The in-scope service list is summarised; the precise carve-outs (particularly on immigration and asylum) and the current clause numbering should be confirmed against the live rules, which are revised from time to time.
- SRA Transparency Rules (current version) - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/transparency-rules/
- Transparency in price and service (guidance) - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/guidance/transparency-in-price-and-service/
- Price transparency Q&A - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/resources/fees/price-transparency-q-a/
- SRA Standards and Regulations - Solicitors Regulation Authority - https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/
- Legal Ombudsman scheme rules - Legal Ombudsman - https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/information-centre/scheme-rules/
- Methodology: current SRA Transparency Rules and price-transparency guidance read for the scope-and-content question specifically. General guidance, not legal advice. Last updated 3 July 2026.