Nicholas St John Gething

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

The Respondent, an experienced solicitor, re-dated (using Tipp-Ex and manuscript alterations) certified copies of Fixed and Floating Charges over two properties and submitted them to Companies House to make it appear they were delivered within the statutory 21-day time limit, when the originals had been rejected and were out of time. The clients and Mortgage Lender were not informed or consented to the re-dating. He admitted all allegations including dishonesty. The Tribunal found breaches of Principles 2, 4, 5 and 6 and dishonesty under the Ivey test. Finding high culpability, medium harm and no exceptional circumstances under SRA v Sharma, the Tribunal struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £5,731.50.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Act in the client's best interests
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Acted dishonestly on two occasions
• Conduct was deliberate and repeated
• Concealed his behaviour by failing to inform the Registrar, clients or Mortgage Lender
• Had been expressly told by a former colleague that he needed to notify client and Lender before changing dates
• Ought reasonably to have known conduct breached obligations to protect public and reputation of profession

Mitigating factors:

• Incidents took place over a short period of two weeks
• Previously unblemished record
• Good character references
• Made frank admissions in disciplinary proceedings after initially challenging allegations
• Cooperated with regulator and proceedings