Chaos as SRA e-registration system generates ‘gibberish’

Lawyers were told earlier this year that to stay on the roll they would need to ­register between 30 August and 14 October - only then could they submit their applications before the deadline of 8 November.

Complaints were made after the site’s launch was delayed by several days and passwords were rejected.

“It took me 10 days to ­register,” one lawyer said. “It was a long process and the system just kept coming up with complete gibberish messages. I called the SRA twice and they couldn’t help - they said the deadline wouldn’t be extended.

“The problem is that everyone will leave it until the last minute and then there’ll be a deluge and it will go into meltdown.”

An SRA spokesman said that so far 25,000 solicitors out of 165,000 had registered online and ­activations have risen to 3,000 per day.

“Implementing [the] mySRA [system] signals a step change in the way ­regulated individuals and firms will access our ­services in future,” said the spokesman. “We’d like to apologise to anyone who has experienced difficulties ­trying to log on to mySRA. Despite extensive testing prior to launch, there have been some ­initial problems.

“We’ve worked around the clock to address these problems, and they’re now well on the way to being resolved.”