On 2 June 2026 the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced that it has been designated a "prescribed person" under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA). In plain terms, anyone who reports wrongdoing in the legal sector to the SRA can now do so with statutory protection against retaliation by their employer. It is a modest-sounding change of regulatory status with potentially significant consequences for how concerns are raised inside law firms and in-house legal teams — and it dovetails directly with the SRA's existing guidance on reporting concerns about wrongdoing when working in-house.
What has actually changed
PIDA is the United Kingdom's principal whistleblowing law. It protects workers who disclose certain categories of wrongdoing from being dismissed or subjected to detriment as a result of speaking up. To qualify for that protection, a disclosure generally has to be made either to the worker's own employer or to a "prescribed person" — a regulator or body that Parliament has recognised as an appropriate recipient of disclosures within its sector. Until now, the SRA was not on that list. Adding it means that a report made to the regulator can itself attract whistleblower protection, rather than only a report made internally to the firm.
The protection applies where the person making the disclosure "reasonably believes" they are acting in the public interest. It covers wrongdoing that is happening now, that took place in the past, or that is likely to happen in the future. Reports can be made through the SRA's Red Alert reporting line.
Who is protected — and it is not just solicitors
The most important practical feature of the change is its breadth. The protection reaches anyone who works for, or with, an SRA-regulated individual or firm. That expressly includes non-qualified staff — paralegals, clerks and trainees — as well as agency workers, alongside regulated solicitors, RELs and RFLs. As the SRA has noted, solicitors already carry a professional duty to report serious misconduct; the value of this measure is largely for the wider workforce, giving colleagues who are not themselves regulated the confidence to come forward.
Aileen Armstrong, the SRA's Executive Director for Strategy and Innovation, framed the rationale in terms of culture, acknowledging that "the fear of damaging one's career can mean that people are reluctant to act," and describing the designation as a step towards making everyone in a firm feel able to raise concerns. The whistleblowing charity Protect, which has long campaigned on the issue, welcomed the move; its Director of Policy and Communications, Andrew Pepper-Parsons, said that approaching the regulator would now "come with enhanced protection," and noted that the annual reports the SRA must publish as a prescribed person will add transparency and accountability to its handling of disclosures.
The gap this closes for solicitors
For solicitors in particular, the designation addresses a longstanding mismatch. The profession is subject to stringent obligations to act with integrity and independence and to report serious misconduct, yet those reporting concerns to their regulator have not previously enjoyed the equivalent statutory employment protection that PIDA affords. Commentators have pointed out that, before this change, the legal test a solicitor had to satisfy to be protected when reporting to a regulator that was not prescribed was effectively as demanding as the test for going to the press or posting publicly. That disconnect — a duty to speak up, but no statutory safety net for doing so — has plausibly contributed to a reluctance to report, out of fear of retaliation, reputational harm, or longer-term career damage. Bringing the SRA within the prescribed persons regime narrows that gap and is intended to give the sector greater confidence that concerns can be raised safely.
How it fits with the in-house reporting guidance
The new status complements, rather than replaces, the SRA's guidance "Reporting concerns about wrongdoing when working in-house." That guidance recognises that the position of in-house solicitors is inherently more complex than that of their colleagues in private practice, because in most cases their client is their employer. It requires them to balance their duties to that client against the wider public interest, and makes clear that where the Principles conflict, those safeguarding the public interest — integrity, independence, and public trust in the profession — take precedence.
In practice, the guidance expects in-house solicitors to raise material concerns internally first, escalating through the chain of legal management and, where necessary, to the governing board. It addresses the difficult scenario where wrongdoing persists despite internal reporting: the solicitor must not facilitate the wrongdoing or help to suppress its exposure — for example, by drafting a non-disclosure agreement designed to stop someone reporting an offence to a law enforcement agency — and may ultimately have to consider whether they can continue to act consistently with their obligations, up to and including resignation. It also reminds solicitors to consider whether an external report is needed, and confirms that the SRA will support those who err on the side of reporting genuine concerns about serious wrongdoing.
What the guidance could not itself provide was statutory protection from the employment consequences of speaking up. The PIDA designation now supplies a layer of that protection where the report is made to the SRA. The two work together: the guidance sets out the professional obligation and the careful balancing exercise around confidentiality and legal professional privilege, while PIDA offers employment-law cover for those who, having undertaken that exercise, decide that a disclosure to the regulator is warranted.
What it means for firms as employers
For firms and in-house employers, the change is a prompt to revisit their own arrangements. The in-house guidance already expects employers to have procedures that allow staff to make a protected disclosure under PIDA, and to foster a "speak up" culture. With the SRA now a prescribed person, those policies should make clear that the regulator is a recognised external route, and should not — whether through NDAs, settlement terms or informal pressure — be drafted or operated in a way that discourages protected disclosures. Firms should also be conscious that the SRA's new annual reporting on disclosures will, over time, shed more light on whistleblowing patterns across the sector, reinforcing the case for getting internal channels right so that concerns are resolved before they need to leave the building.
What in-house solicitors and staff should do now
The sensible response is preparation rather than alarm. In-house solicitors should make sure they understand their organisation's reporting lines before they ever need them, and should keep a written record of any concern they identify — its nature, the action they took, the outcome, and the reasons for their decisions — as the guidance recommends. They should understand both the new protection and its limits: the PIDA cover attaches to qualifying disclosures made on a reasonable belief that they are in the public interest, but it does not override a solicitor's separate duties of confidentiality and legal professional privilege, which still require careful judgment before any external disclosure. Where the position is genuinely uncertain, independent advice is available, including from Protect's confidential advice line, the SRA's Professional Ethics helpline, LawCare and the Solicitors' Assistance Scheme.
For non-regulated colleagues — the paralegals, clerks, trainees and agency workers now expressly within scope — the message is simpler and arguably more powerful: a route to the regulator now exists that carries protection against being penalised for using it.
In summary
The SRA's designation as a prescribed person under PIDA is a meaningful strengthening of whistleblower protection in the legal sector. It does not change solicitors' professional obligations, and it does not dissolve the difficult balancing exercise that reporting concerns can involve. But by giving everyone connected to a regulated firm a protected channel to the regulator, it lowers one of the practical barriers to speaking up — and gives in-house teams, and the firms that employ them, good reason to make sure their own reporting culture and procedures are fit for purpose.
This article is general information for compliance and training purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Whether a particular disclosure qualifies for protection, and how it interacts with duties of confidentiality and legal professional privilege, will depend on the specific circumstances.
