Deborah Fleet v Bloomsbury Law Solicitors

Cases referred to: Yedina v Yedin [2017] EWHC 3319 (Ch) Ebanks v Salcombe Road Ltd [2025] UKFTT 924 (PC) Southern Land Securities Ltd v Reynolds [2026] UKUT 84 (LC) INTRODUCTION

1. The Applicant is the registered proprietor of a long leasehold interest in the subject property and a former client of the Respondent firm of solicitors. That firm has the benefit of a restriction entered against her title. The Applicant applied to alter the register to have that restriction removed, contending that she had not consented to it. The Respondent objected on the basis that she had given her consent. The matter was referred by HM Land Registry to this Tribunal and directions were given leading to a final hearing before me.

2. That hearing was conducted through the Cloud Video Platform, which was a proportionate and sensible way of dealing with the case given the nature of the issues between the parties. At that hearing of this matter, the Applicant represented herself and Mr Hudson represented the Respondent. I heard oral evidence from the Applicant and from Mr Jamil Ahmud, the solicitor at the Respondent who had been dealing with the Applicant.

3. I have decided that the Applicant is correct and the restriction should be removed. I shall seek to explain why in the remainder of this decision.

4. By way of further introductory matters, I should record here that the efficient conduct of the Tribunal proceedings has been hindered by the Respondent’s approach. At times the Respondent has simply failed to engage with the proceedings in any meaningful way, while at others it has adopted an approach which has appeared to be obstructive. This background is explained in more detail in my orders of 7 th April 2025, 5 th August 2025, and 9 th October 2025. I will not repeat the content of those here, but may need to refer to some elements of them further below. For present purposes though it can be noted that the Respondent’s disclosure fell woefully short of full compliance with the Tribunal’s directions.

5. That generally unhelpful approach unfortunately continued through to the hearing. The Tribunal’s hearing directions had required the Respondent to provide a hearing bundle and skeleton argument by 7 days before the pre-trial review hearing, which was listed for 22 nd January. The Respondent did not comply with these requirements. When the Tribunal made enquiries, Mr Ahmud explained that he had not received the hearing directions setting out those requirements. This was a little surprising, as the Tribunal had sent them to the same email address that it used for other correspondence and from which Mr Ahmud had sent emails to the Tribunal. I was, nonetheless, content to accept this explanation from Mr Ahmud as a solicitor. After discussion with the parties at the pre-trial review, revised directions were given for the bundle to be provided by 23 rd January, with skeleton arguments by 5pm on 27 th January.

6. The bundle was provided late against even this revised direction. Mr Ahmud sought to blame the Applicant for this in email correspondence, saying that she had failed to send copies of her documents on time. This was most unimpressive explanation, as all of the relevant documents had already been provided to the Respondent in accordance with the Tribunal’s earlier case management directions. Worse was still to come though, because while the Applicant (despite being a litigant in person) was able to provide her skeleton argument by the revised deadline, the Respondent missed it completely.

7. So it was that the hearing commenced without any skeleton argument having been received from the Respondent. I was informed at the start of that hearing that a skeleton argument had, nonetheless, been filed on behalf of the Respondent. I was told by Mr Ahmud that this had been sent to the Applicant the previous day, but she said she had not received it until that morning. When I explained that it should be relatively simple to determine when the skeleton argument had first been sent to the Applicant, because Mr Ahmud could forward on to the Tribunal his email to the Applicant, he swiftly changed tack and said that he had attempted to send it the previous day, but it now appeared that the email had not actually gone until the morning.

8. It also appears that the Respondent’s skeleton argument was sent to the wrong email address for the Tribunal (it was sent to one used for residential property cases). I have seen that email, and I note that it is timed at 21:46 the day before the hearing. In those circumstances it is entirely unsurprising that this Tribunal did not receive the Respondent’s skeleton argument until Mr Hudson himself sent it directly to me during the hearing.

9. What was rather surprising was that Mr Hudson vigorously resisted any suggestion of an adjournment to allow the Applicant an opportunity to consider his late skeleton argument, despite the Tribunal having indicated that it appeared to take a number of wholly new points. Having considered his objections, I adjourned for around an hour to allow the Applicant to read the skeleton argument.

10. I record here that there was no acknowledgment, let alone anything remotely resembling an apology, from the Respondent for the failure to comply with the Tribunal’s revised directions. This is troubling, because it suggests an inability to recognise that the approach adopted by the Respondent was actively unhelpful, quite apart from being in complete defiance of the obligations imposed on the Respondent by rule 3(4) of The Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Property Chamber) Rules 2013. FURTHER BACKGROUND

11. The Respondent firm was engaged by the Applicant in relation to litigation and conveyancing matters. The Respondent’s position is that she was behind with payment of legal fees and so it was agreed between them that she would pay those fees out of the proceeds of sale of the property.

12. The Respondent’s case is that, accordingly, the Applicant agreed in May 2018 to grant the Respondent a second charge over the property. To that effect, she signed a Form CH1 on 21 st July 2018. Box 8 of that form included the text of a restriction that the borrower (meaning the Applicant) was applying to have entered. That was as follows. “No disposition of the registered estate, by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a written consent signed by Bloomsbury Law Solicitors of 17 Manchester Street, London W1U 4DJ or their conveyancer.”

13. The Tribunal has only been provided by the parties with the second page of this form, which was the only part of it that was in evidence at the final hearing. There were two copies of this signed document in evidence, at pages 88 and 106 of the hearing bundle. No point was taken by either party about any apparent differences between the two copies. The Applicant’s case is that she was only ever sent the one page. While I was preparing this decision, I reviewed some of the material provided by HM Land Registry when the matter was referred and discovered that both pages of Form CH1 had been included as enclosures to a letter of objection sent by the Respondent to HM Land Registry on 28 th February 2023. It is not clear why the Respondent never produced this additional page to the Tribunal. I return to this further below.

14. The Applicant sent the signed copy to Mr Ahmud by email on 21 st July 2018. The email was headed “signature for charge”. The full text of that email read as follows. “Dear Jamil Thank you. I have received your hard copy letter by post. I have signed and posted back to you today. Meanwhile, I have scanned the copy I have signed, as well for you to have today: attachment 0160 Do you know what time on the 30th July? Many thanks for all the help you have done Regards Deborah”

15. It is clear from the printed copy of this email that there was a JPEG file attached to it and it was common ground that this was the one page of the CH1 that the Applicant had signed.

16. The Respondent’s case is then that the Applicant’s mortgagee refused to allow a second charge to be granted against the property, and so Mr Ahmud discussed the matter with the Applicant and it was agreed that a lesser security than a charge could be put in place by way of a restriction. This may seem to be an entirely unsurprising outcome. The Respondent’s pleaded case at paragraph 11 of its Statement of Case, repeated at paragraph 12 of Mr Ahmud’s witness statement, is actually that it was the mortgagor which refused to allow a charge to be registered, but I have treated this as being intended to refer to the mortgagee. The repetition of this basic mistake (which as a one-off would be readily understandable as a simple typographical error of the sort that any of us might make ) is an example of the Respondent’s rather careless approach to this litigation.

17. On 29 th August 2018, the Respondent applied to HM Land Registry to register the restriction. This was done on Form RX1. At Box 8, it was explained that the reason that the Respondent was entitled to apply for a restriction was because it was an application “made with the consent of the registered proprietor”. The Respondent stated that: “I am the applicant’s conveyancer and certify that I hold the relevant consent” The “applicant” there being the current Respondent.

18. The wording of the proposed restriction set out in Box 9 of Form RX1 was as follows. “No disposition of the registered estate by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a written consent signed by Bloomsbury Law Solicitors of 17 Manchester Street, London W1U 4DJ.”

19. That restriction was duly entered as number 5 in the proprietorship register for the subject property.

20. The Applicant’s position is that she did not become aware of the restriction until 2021. An application to remove it was made in 2023. There was some back and forth with HM Land Registry before her application was accepted for consideration and notice was then given to the Respondent. Following the Respondent’s objection, the matter was referred to this Tribunal.

21. Because of the way that the Respondent advanced its case at the final hearing, it is helpful to consider how the parties’ cases had been put in pleadings and evidence.

22. The Applicant’s initial Statement of Case was a very short document. She said that she had been “instructed” by the Respondent to sign an incomplete document.

23. The Respondent’s Statement of Case is a surprisingly amateurish document, bearing in mind that it was prepared by a firm of solicitors. It mixes up the identity of the parties as well as appearing to be confused about the difference between a mortgagor and a mortgagee. Leaving those flaws to one side, it is instructive to see how the Respondent put its case. See paragraphs 3, 8, 10, 11, and 12 .

24. At paragraph 4, the Respondent said that “disclosure in this case will be voluminous”.

25. At paragraphs 7 and 8, the possibility of a charge is introduced. This is said to have been offered by the Applicant. The Respondent then states at paragraph 9 that “this offer was accepted and the CH1 was prepared and sent to her in July 2018. On 21 July 2018, the Applicant signed and returned the CH1 which was witnessed by her good friend Mr Everett.” I interpose here to note that the name of the witness to her signature is Julian Everitt. The incorrect spelling of his name is used on at least four occasions in the Respondent’s Statement of Case.

26. Paragraph 11 of the Respondent’s Statement of Case is extremely important and so I shall set it out in full. “11. Subsequently, the mortgagor (sic) refused to allow the Respondent to register the Charge on the basis of the amount that the Applicant was indebted to them and the terms of the borrowing. As a result, Mr Ahmud discussed the matter with the Applicant and informed her that an unregistered Charge was of not (sic) use, but they would accept a lesser form of security by way of a Restriction. The Applicant agreed for a lesser security than a Charge to be put in place on her property by way of a Restriction to be placed on the Title of the Property. This application proceeded which was registered at the Land Registry on 29 August 2018. No objection was taken by the Applicant until payment was being sought and she realised that she would have little equity remaining for the Applicant’s own use.”

27. The only way that this can be understood is if the Respondent’s case is that the Applicant’s consent to a restriction came after the process of attempting to secure a charge had broken down and therefore that consent obviously could not have been contained in the Form CH1 signed in July 2018.

28. Because the Applicant’s Statement of Case was rather lacking in detail, the Tribunal directed her to provide further information. She therefore submitted a second Statement of Case containing further detail. She denied having offered a charge and pointed out that this would have been confirmed in writing by the Respondent. She said that she signed a single page document which did not identify that it was a CH1 form. She signed and returned that single page on the instruction of the Respondent. She claims that she was not informed that a charge was of no use or that the Respondent would accept a restriction. She was not informed when the application to register the restriction was made and so she could not raise any objection.

29. Despite having claimed that disclosure would be voluminous, the Respondent entirely failed to provide any disclosure at all by the deadline given in the Tribunal’s directions.

30. On 26 th March 2025, I had directed the Respondent to provide a copy of the consent referred to in its Form RX1. The Respondent did not so. On 7 th April 2025, I made an order requiring the consent to be sent by 2 nd May, in default of which the Tribunal would consider debarring the Respondent. I explained the reasons for doing so as follows. “1. The alleged written consent is plainly an important document. As such, it should have been included by the Respondent with its Statement of Case. It was not. It then should have been included in disclosure. It was not. The Tribunal therefore gave a specific direction to the Respondent to provide a copy, hoping that this would mean that the document would finally be made available. It was not. “2. This all gives rise to some concern as to whether the Respondent does actually hold a written consent, as it is represented to HM Land Registry that it did when it applied for a restriction. It is therefore necessary, and in accordance with the overriding objective, to make an order that makes clear to the Respondent that if a copy of this document is not provided the Tribunal may make an order disposing of these proceedings. This order also allows either party to make written representations for or against that possibility, as I consider that it only fair to give the Respondent an opportunity to explain its position if a copy of the consent is not provided.”

31. Very shortly before the deadline given in my order, the Respondent wrote to the Tribunal to say that “We attach the further disclosure that has been ordered by the Tribunal … these are events that took place seven years ago in 2018 and not all of the documents are readily available as the Respondent in the meantime has had a new server system installed and all documents are not available. Further disclosure is being obtained and will be disclosed as and when they are retrieved.” Attached to that email was a six-page PDF, which included the single page from Form CH1, rather than a complete form. The Respondent did not at that time suggest that the consent might not have been in writing. No further disclosure was ever given by the Respondent. Within the trial bundle there was a single page document headed “Respondent’s list of documents”, dated 6 th June 2025. This does not appear to have been sent to the Tribunal and that time and is so hopelessly non-compliant with the Tribunal’s disclosure directions that it is hard to understand how any solicitor could ever have prepared it.

32. The Applicant relied on witness statements dated 17 th July and 21 st September 2025. A fair amount of the material in both of them was not relevant to the issues that were before the Tribunal. The second statement, in particular, was exclusively directed at a dispute over fees and invoices. The key point in the first witness statement was that the Applicant’s evidence was that she had signed an incomplete Form CH1. It is helpful at this stage to set out paragraphs 12A-12C of that statement. “12A. I would like to explain the circumstances in which I signed the incomplete CH1 form relied upon by the Respondent. In July 2018, I received an unexpected telephone call from the Respondent, who told me that a document would be arriving by post and that I must sign it on the day I received it, scan it back to him immediately, and return the hard copy by post. He said the matter was urgent and that he needed it signed before an upcoming court date on 30 July 2018. “12B. Under time pressure and relying on the Respondents instructions, I signed the document as directed. Being dyslexic, I asked the Respondent what he wanted me to write in the email subject line when returning the signed form. He told me to write ‘signature of charge,’ which he explained meant that it was simply holding information for the mortgage company. “12C. The document (the incomplete CH1 form) arrived on 21 July 2018, and as instructed, I signed the single page I was sent, scanned it to him that same day, and posted the hard copy. I received no covering letter, no explanatory documents, and was given no explanation of the implications of the form. I only ever saw one page – the signature page – which I returned by email on 21 July 2018 ….”

33. Mr Ahmud’s witness statement was dated 26 th October 2025. At paragraph 10 of his statement he says that the CH1 was prepared by Miss Katie Belchamber (a trainee solicitor at the time who was also, along with a Mr Imran Ahmad, dealing with the Applicant’s case) and that “The entire document was sent to her, not just one page.” That would appear to be the first time that the Respondent had positively asserted this in these proceedings.

34. At paragraph 12 of his statement Mr Ahmud repeats some of what was said at paragraph 11 of the Statement of Case, quoted above. He then says this: “In no uncertain terms, the Applicant provided her oral consent to providing a Restriction. The matter was then passed on to Miss Belchamber to deal with the Restriction. I cannot recall if the Applicant provided her written consent to Miss Belchamber or this was to later follow, but she certainly once again provided her oral consent to her as I recall Miss Belchamber telling me that she had also spoken to the Applicant and that the Applicant had informed her that she was pleased that she was now able to provide security as she was very worried that without the Restriction, the Respondent would ceased (sic) acting for her. There can be no doubt that the Applicant did provide security in the form of a Restriction and she knew exactly what she was offering.”

35. Rather remarkably, the Respondent subsequently wrote to say that it “occurs to us that disclosure has not fully taken place as we wish to disclose a large amount of documentation and we invited the Applicant to come and inspect the documents but has not done so. It would be disproportionate to list the documents individually. Directions is sought as to how to deal with this matter at the final hearing if the Applicant is opting not to inspect the document.”

36. I declined to give any further disclosure directions for reasons that were set out in my order of 9 th October 2025. At paragraph 18 of the reasons for that order I said this: “I should also say that having read the Respondent’s sole witness statement, I am very concerned about the merits of the Respondent’s case and whether the Respondent has sought to mislead the Tribunal. In his witness statement, Mr Ahmud says, at para.12, that ‘the Applicant provided her oral consent to providing a restriction ... I cannot recall if the Applicant provided her written consent’. This is extremely concerning because it is precisely that written consent that the Tribunal directed should be specifically disclosed, and which the Respondent had represented to HM Land Registry that it held. The only inference to be drawn from the Respondent’s email of 2nd May 2025 is that it was relying on documents already provided, but that does not fit in with the timeline in Mr Ahmud’s witness statement (and, indeed, the Respondent’s Statement of Case) that the consent was provided after the process of registering a charge had broken down. Furthermore, it is now clear that the Respondent’s only witness does not know if there was a written consent, despite having represented that it was included in the limited disclosure given on 2nd May 2025. I also therefore have grave doubts whether this can be properly considered to provide the specific disclosure ordered by the Tribunal in its 7th April order.”

37. I went on to say that I had decided not to make any further directions dealing with that specific point but that the Tribunal would be likely to want to hear an explanation at the final hearing for what I described as a “sorry state of affairs”.

38. There matters rested until the Respondent’s very late skeleton argument, in which it was submitted that the written consent was the Form CH1 (whether or not a complete copy had been provided to the Applicant) or that the Applicant had given her oral consent and no written consent was required. DISCUSSION & ANALYSIS

39. I start this section by explaining briefly what this case is not about. I am not dealing with the question of whether the Applicant owes the Respondent any money for legal services. I shall proceed on the assumption that she does, and it is not necessary for me to consider the validity or accuracy of any bills or invoices. I am also not dealing with any issues about the quality of the service provided by the Respondent. This is not the appropriate forum for addressing her complaints in this respect. Although the general impression given by the Respondent’s conduct in these proceedings rather suggests that at least some of the Applicant’s complaints may be well-founded.

40. Mr Hudson emphasised that the burden of proof was on the Applicant. As this is her application, that is right up to a point, although one would ordinarily expect a firm of solicitors in the Respondent’s position to demonstrate that they held consent for a restriction by producing that consent.

41. In this respect, matters have not been helped by the Respondent changing its position so dramatically, as I have recorded above. At the hearing, both Mr Ahmud and Mr Hudson suggested at times that perhaps the Respondent’s position in its Statement of Case was not as clear as it could have been. This did not recognise the reality of the situation, which was that the Respondent had changed its position quite substantially.

42. I will also make here some brief comments about the witnesses and their evidence. It is important to recognise that in assessing the witness evidence to determine disputes of fact, the Tribunal applies the civil standard of proof, i.e. the balance of probabilities, or whether something is more likely than not. I explained the approach taken by the Tribunal to evaluating witness evidence in Ebanks v Salcombe Road Ltd [2025] UKFTT 924 (PC), at [67]-[86]. I intend to adopt the same approach here, without needing to repeat everything said in that case.

43. When comparing the Applicant’s oral evidence with that given by the Respondent’s witness, I must bear in mind that she was cross-examined by experienced counsel, while Mr Ahmud was not. In my view, neither witness was entirely satisfactory. This is not intended as a criticism of the Applicant’s cross-examination, just a reflection of the reality of the differing levels of experience.

44. In closing submissions, Mr Hudson criticised the Applicant as having been evasive in her oral evidence and it is certainly fair to say that at times she was most reluctant to engage with the substance of specific questions. That is something that I keep in mind when evaluating her evidence. The Applicant has repeatedly drawn attention to her dyslexia. During the course of cross-examination, Mr Hudson had suggested to the Applicant that she was voluntarily choosing when she understood things and when she did not, in an attempt to get herself out of the restriction. Having observed the Applicant’s evidence closely, I do not agree with this suggestion. In my assessment, the Applicant was genuinely confused and muddled by much of the legal terminology. After the hearing, she wrote to the Tribunal to complain that the Respondent had sent her material relating to a different case. This was in fact an authority relied on by the Respondent, which had been discussed in some detail in the hearing. I do not think that this was any sort of ploy by the Applicant, but that this arose from genuine confusion on her part. In my view, much of her evidence needs to be understood in that context. It may not have helped matters that Mr Ahmud seems to be very loose in his use of legal terminology : see, by way of example, the mortgagee/mortgagor point discussed elsewhere, and he also incorrectly referred to the Respondent having a charge over the property in correspondence in 2021, despite the Applicant having (correctly) identified it as a restriction.

45. Mr Ahmud is an experienced solicitor and senior partner at the Respondent. It is therefore with some dismay that I have to say that I found his evidence to be generally unreliable and that he was lacking in credibility. At times, his answers involved lengthy argument that had nothing to do with the questions. At other times, his oral evidence expanded significantly on his written evidence in ways which were simply not credible. For instance, he said that the Applicant had returned both pages of the Form CH1 by post. When he was asked, quite reasonably in the circumstances, why this was not in his witness statement, he said that he had not thought that this was in dispute. That was simply not a tenable or credible explanation as it was quite obvious that this was very much a key dispute between the parties. Mr Ahmud’s explanation for not having dealt with this earlier was not believable. Similarly, when he was asked why there were no file notes in evidence covering discussions about the charge and the restriction, his answer was again that this was not in dispute. This was also not remotely plausible as an explanation.

46. Having made those initial observations on the witness evidence, I can turn now to deal with the issues between the parties.

47. I am satisfied that there was an agreement of sorts between the parties that any fees owed by the Applicant would be paid to the Respondent out of the proceeds of sale of her flat. The Applicant eventually agreed with this during the course of her oral evidence and so there was no real dispute left about this by the end of the evidence.

48. While that therefore provides the context for what then happened between the parties and explains why a Form CH1 may have been prepared, it does not really help with resolving the key factual questions that remain.

49. The first of those is what was sent in the post by the Respondent to the Applicant in July 2018?

50. The Applicant says that it was only the single page document which was in evidence. The Respondent’s position, in Mr Ahmud’s written evidence, was that the “entire document” was sent. By the conclusion of his oral evidence, this had developed into stating that two pages of Form CH1 had been sent as one double-sided document, along with a covering letter.

51. Although Mr Hudson argued forcefully that the Applicant’s account was reconstruction based on her discovery of the single page scanned attachment to her email. I do not accept that submission. In my judgment, it was Mr Ahmud’s evidence that was reconstruction, based on an overly critical analysis of the wording of the Applicant’s short email. I am satisfied that the Applicant’s evidence is to be preferred. My reasons are as follows. Which are in addition to the observations already made about the witnesses and their general credibility.

52. In cross-examination, the Applicant had confirmed that her position was that she signed an incomplete CH1 form without knowing at the time that it was incomplete. She explained that Mr Ahmud had called her a few days before that, telling her that a letter was on its way for her to sign, and that it was holding information for the mortgage company, which had to be signed quickly because there was a pending court case coming up. She was asked to explain what “holding information for the mortgage company” mean and said that this was what Mr Ahmud had told her over the telephone, and that he had told her it was coming by post in a few days and was a matter of urgency. The Applicant said that he instructed her to sign it and she did because he was her trusted solicitor.

53. Mr Hudson argued that this was different to her written evidence at paragraphs 12A and 12B, which I have quoted above. I reject that argument, which ignores paragraph 12C. I accept that if one stops at paragraph 12B, it could well be understood as saying that the telephone call about “holding information for the mortgage company” had come after the document had been received, but it is clear if one continues to paragraph 12C that this call came earlier and that the first sentence of paragraph 12B is out of chronological sequence.

54. It was also argued that if the documentation had been incomplete, the Applicant would have raised that at the time. I do not accept this submission. It is hardly surprising that the Applicant paid little attention to the contents of what she received, given that she had been told by Mr Ahmud that she was being sent a document which she needed to sign. While some litigants will scrutinise carefully anything sent to them by their solicitor, others will often place unquestioning trust in their solicitor. In my judgment, some of the criticisms made in cross-examination and closing submissions failed to appreciate the reality of many solicitor-client relationships.

55. The Respondent seized on the word “letter” in the Applicant’s covering email, arguing that this showed that she must have received more than a single page. On the Respondent’s case, this cannot mean simply both pages of Form CH1, because the word “letter” is as apt (or inapt) to describe one page of that form as it is to describe both pages.

56. For the Respondent’s argument to work there would have needed to be some kind of covering note. In cross-examination, Mr Ahmud said that he had prepared a covering letter. His written evidence does not suggest that there was any such note or letter. His statement was made over three months after the Applicant’s statement in which she quite clearly stated that there had been “no covering letter, no explanatory documents”. Had he genuinely thought that there had been a covering letter, he would have said so in his written evidence. Indeed, his written evidence is quite inconsistent with any claim that there was a covering letter, because in his witness statement he said that “the document” (singular) was prepared by Miss Belchamber, but in his oral evidence he claimed that a letter would have been prepared by him. This was entirely unheralded new evidence, many years after the event. The Respondent has not produced a copy of any covering letter, or even any file note containing even the vaguest or remotest reference to a covering letter or any other relevant communication.

57. While I accept that “letter” is not the most natural word to describe what the Applicant claims to have received from the Respondent on 21 st July 2018, it is my judgment that it is not an entirely inapposite word and that it is a word that is not infrequently used in common parlance as a synonym for a piece of post. I agree that on a narrow meaning of “letter” this would not have been the correct word to use, but the Applicant’s evidence does describe something that falls within a broader definition of the word “letter”. I also think that the Respondent is trying to read too much into what was inevitably a hurried email message.

58. This can be seen when more of the message is examined. I have quoted it above, but it is worth repeating the most material part here: “I have received your hard copy letter by post. I have signed and posted back to you today. Meanwhile, I have scanned the copy I have signed, as well for you to have today …”

59. If the word “letter” in the first sentence refers to a covering letter (or the full Form CH1 and a covering letter), the statements in the next two sentences that the Applicant has “signed and posted back” and “scanned the copy I have signed” become rather difficult to understand. There is no suggestion that the Applicant sent back any covering letter, and it would not make sense if she did. Nor can it reasonably be suggested that she would have signed such a letter. But her message does not distinguish at all between a “letter”, in the sense inferred by the Respondent, and the form that she was required to sign. This therefore supports her evidence that “letter” was a rather clumsy way of referring to a single page received through the post.

60. The Applicant was specifically cross-examined on the basis that the Form CH1 had been sent to her as a double-sided document. This had not been foreshadowed anywhere in the written evidence, but in his oral evidence Mr Ahmud did say that he believed it had been a double-sided document. If, as Mr Ahmud now asserts, the Form CH1 was sent as a double-sided document then it stands to reason that the Applicant would have to return the whole document (unlike with a scanned copy, where it would not be implausible for someone to only scan and send by email the signature page). The Respondent has not produced any record of what was received from the Applicant by post. It had not been suggested until the oral evidence that the CH1 was sent as a double-sided document. The Tribunal did not have any evidence from Miss Belchamber, who is said to have been responsible for preparing the form. I was told by Mr Ahmud that she had moved to another firm, had a child, and left the legal profession generally. In those circumstances, I do not think that I should be too critical of the failure to produce her as a witness, but it does mean that the Tribunal is left with a situation where there is no evidence from a potentially crucial witness.

61. It is quite remarkable that at no point in the Tribunal proceedings has the Respondent produced the first page of the CH1.

62. I only discovered it by chance when preparing this decision because I was reviewing the material provided by HM Land Registry when it referred the matter. For whatever reason, the Respondent did not rely on this as part of its evidence for the Tribunal. I do not consider that my discovery of this additional page makes any difference to the outcome of these proceedings. It is plainly obvious that a two-page form would have been prepared. The key question is how much of that form was sent to the Applicant. The additional page does not help the Respondent to show that it was sent to the Applicant. In the Respondent’s enclosures to the letter to HM Land Registry, it is presented in between her email of 21 st July and the second page of the form. Insofar as that might appear to give the impression that both pages were attached to that email, that is wrong, because only the signature page had been scanned and attached to the Applicant’s email. There is no other explanation as to how this extra page was located in 2023, when the Respondent’s letter of objection was sent to HM Land Registry, and what has happened to it since.

63. Mr Ahmud’s evidence about the missing page was most unsatisfactory. He told the Tribunal that both pages had been sent to HM Land Registry by his firm’s property department. He could not explain why his witness statement had not said this, nor could he explain why the property department would send the original away to HM Land Registry without keeping a copy. His account made no sense on its own terms, because his evidence to the Tribunal was that the property department sent the full document to HM Land Registry when they applied to have the restriction registered. That cannot be correct, because they had checked the box on Form RX1 indicating that the Respondent firm continued to hold the consent. Mr Ahmud had no answer when this obvious point was raised. It also cannot have been correct because the Respondent seems to have had access to both pages when the letter of objection, dated 28 th February 2023, was sent. I am driven to the conclusion that Mr Ahmud was very much making things up as he went along.

64. For those reasons, I accept the Applicant’s evidence that she was only sent a single sheet of paper, printed on one side. If, however, she had not satisfied me on the basis of her own evidence that it was more likely than not that she was only sent the one page of the Form CH1, I consider that there was other useful evidence available that would have assisted in resolving any doubt.

65. Within the trial bundle there was a short “To whom it may concern” letter from Mr Everitt, dated 13 th November 2022. In that letter, Mr Everitt had said that he was present when the Applicant “opened a letter containing a single sheet of a document that began with a box numbered 6 and ended with a box numbered 10. There was no clarity as to the title of this document and there was no covering letter, or note, from the sender.”

66. Mr Everitt goes on to explain that he had been told by the Applicant that her solicitor urgently required the return of the form and so he was there with her to save time when she opened the letter. He also says that he expressed concern about it being an incomplete document but was told by the Applicant that she had been instructed by her solicitor to have it signed and witness as quickly as possible.

67. This is, as I have said, in the form of a letter rather than a witness statement. As such, there is no statement of truth on it. Although the Tribunal’s directions required any statement to be supported by a signed statement of truth, this is not an inflexible requirement: see Southern Land Securities Ltd v Reynolds [2026] UKUT 84 (LC) . It is also relevant that the Tribunal is empowered to admit evidence which would not be admissible in a civil trial: rule 18(6) of the 2013 Rules. There is a further complication in assessing this piece of evidence, which is that Mr Everitt did not attend the hearing and has not been cross-examined about his account. The Applicant explained in her evidence that this was because he was working. In my view, that was a poor explanation, as the hearing was conducted as a video hearing and arrangements could have been made to minimise any inconvenience or disruption to Mr Everitt.

68. In all of those circumstances, it is my view that the Tribunal can take account of Mr Everitt’s letter, but that the weight to be attached to it is necessarily quite limited. Even affording it only that limited weight, it is my judgment that, had there been any doubt as to whether the Applicant’s account or Mr Ahmud’s was to be preferred, the letter from Mr Everitt would have been sufficient to tip the balance in the Applicant’s favour.

69. Mr Everitt’s letter also helps to illustrate a slightly different point, which is that he refers to the Applicant having “opened a letter containing a single sheet of a document”. There, “letter” must mean the envelope itself or, possibly, the item of post. Mr Everitt cannot be intending it to mean a letter, in the traditional sense of a page, or pages, beginning “Dear” and ending with a signature. Again, his usage is within a broad meaning of the word “letter”.

70. For all of those reasons, I am satisfied that the Applicant was only sent the second page of the Form CH1. She was not sent the first page or any covering letter.

71. In those circumstances, it is not open to the Respondent to rely on the entirety of the CH1 as an executed deed. I did not understand the Respondent to disagree with this basic proposition. On behalf of the Respondent, Mr Hudson submitted that no reliance could be placed on the allegedly incomplete CH1 to challenge the Applicant’s willingness to allow a restriction to be entered, as the page that she unquestionably did receive and sign contains all of the relevant details of the restriction that was entered (see paragraph 21 of the Respondent’s skeleton argument).

72. One minor objection might be that the wording of the restriction that was actually entered was not in exactly the same words as Box 8 on the Form CH1, contrary to a suggestion made by Mr Hudson in cross-examination (see the quotations at paragraphs 12 and 18, above). I do not think that this would provide sufficient basis for the Applicant to succeed. The difference in punctuation is, I think, irrelevant. If the only complaint by the Applicant about the restriction that had been entered is that it missed off the words “or their conveyancer”, this could have been addressed by a direction under r.40 of the 2013 Rules to add in those additional words. The questioning about this point was hindered because the office copy entry for title number WSX282226 had not been included in the trial bundle.

73. The more important issue is whether her signature on that page, being part of an incomplete deed intended to grant a charge over her property and a concomitant restriction to go alongside that charge, signifies her consent to a free-standing restriction.

74. Mr Hudson relied, by way of analogy on Yedina v Yedin [2017] EWHC 3319 (Ch) , and said that the Applicant could not rely on the principles of This is the decision that the Applicant mistakenly thought was to do with an entirely different case; of course, it was a different case, but it was being relied on here as an authority. non est factum . In my view, this does not assist the Respondent on the particular facts of this case, because it seeks to pluck just one element out of an incomplete agreement and to rely on that.

75. While the Applicant’s signature on that single page document, which includes a statement that she applies to enter a restriction against a registered estate, can be taken to be her agreement (and therefore her consent) to that restriction being entered, that is in the context of an apparent agreement (even on the basis of the incomplete form) for the Applicant, as borrower, to charge the property by way of legal mortgage as security for payment of sums identified as “all monies borrowed and owed, and any further sums advanced hereafter”. A further problem for the Respondent might be that the incomplete document signed by the Applicant does not even identify the registered estate that any restriction is to relate to. It might be said that this should be implied, but that was not the Respondent’s case and the Tribunal did not hear any argument on this issue.

76. This was not a freestanding and unlimited consent to a restriction being entered, but can only be interpreted as being a consent to that restriction being entered in the context of a charge being granted in those terms. Once the charge fell away, I cannot accept that this left the Applicant’s consent intact. It was all part and parcel of the same thing. It is not open to the Respondent to rely on just one part when the whole agreement (even in the incomplete manner in which it was set out on the single-page document) had fallen apart. It seems to me to be somewhat telling that on the Respondent’s own case, it realised that and sought to get a further consent from the Applicant.

77. This then leads on the second significant question of fact, which is whether the Applicant subsequently gave an oral consent to the restriction (which in turn will lead to the legal question of whether an oral consent would be sufficient).

78. The Respondent did not clearly plead in its Statement of Case that there had been an oral consent, but this could be a fair reading of paragraph 11 of that document. This assertion did not fully emerge until paragraph 12 of Mr Ahmud’s witness statement, where it is said, for the first time, that oral consent was given both to him and then separately to Miss Belchamber. In this regard, I agree with Mr Ahmud and Mr Hudson that the Respondent’s pleading could have been clearer ; this is different from the first two points concerning reliance on the CH1 form, which is not a case of the Respondent’s pleading not having been clear enough, but a case where the Respondent has totally changed its position from its pleaded case and even from Mr Ahmud’s written evidence.

79. The Applicant was only cross-examined quite briefly on this particular point. She said that she had not heard from the Respondent about agreeing a lesser form of security.

80. I accept the Applicant’s evidence, which was subjected to very limited challenge on this issue. There is a complete absence of any supporting evidence for the Respondent’s contention, which was a point which was not clearly raised until more than seven years after the alleged discussions took place. Astonishingly, there were no file notes whatsoever to support any suggestion that there had been such discussions.

81. Mr Hudson submitted that it was understandable that no note had been taken by the Respondent firm when the critical oral discussion took place, because there was already the signed CH1 incorporating the restriction and so there was not any new agreement. I do not agree. On the Respondent’s case, this was plainly an extremely important discussion. It is simply inconceivable that any competent solicitor would not have made even the briefest of notes about it. The reason that no note exists is not because this was confirmation of an earlier agreement, but because no such discussion took place in the terms now alleged by Mr Ahmud.

82. I therefore find as a fact that no oral agreement was reached as claimed by the Respondent and so the argument on this point fails on its facts.

83. Even if there had been any such oral agreement, I consider that the argument would also have failed as a matter of law, because the Form RX1 requires the conveyancer to certify that they “hold” the proprietor’s consent and in my judgment that choice of wording is inconsistent with the suggestion that an oral consent is sufficient. I acknowledge Mr Hudson’s point that the RX1 form does not expressly refer to a written consent, but it is an extremely unnatural use of language to talk of holding an oral consent.

84. I do not think that the issue is necessarily determined by the wording of the Form RX1, which may be to focus on the wrong thing. In my view, the more important consideration is r.92 of Land Registration Rules 2003 (SI 2003/1417), in particular r.92(6), which provides that “If an application is made with the consent of the relevant registered proprietor, or a person entitled to be registered as such proprietor, the registrar may accept a certificate given by a conveyancer that the conveyancer holds the relevant consent”. This is clearly the source for the statement on the Form RX1 and uses the same phrasing.

85. I therefore reject all of the Respondent’s arguments. Had I thought that there was any merit in the new arguments, I would have needed to consider whether they were even properly open to the Respondent to run as they had not been pleaded or raised before the morning of the trial. If I had been minded to allow the Respondent to pursue them I would have also needed to consider whether to allow the Applicant to raise issues of undue influence and duress. Although those issues had not been fully pleaded by her, they did start to emerge from her written evidence and came more to the fore in her oral evidence. Given that solicitors are within the special class of established relationships of influence and as the Respondent has not been able to produce any file notes or records of advice given to the Applicant about this transaction, I would have been strongly inclined to allow the Applicant to raise these points, had it been necessary to consider this. It is only fair to the Applicant to note that her initial Statement of Case had asserted that she had been instructed by the Respondent to sign a document and that “Inappropriate pressure” had been applied. POST-HEARING DEVELOPMENTS

86. While I was in the process of writing this decision, the Applicant made the Tribunal aware that the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority had intervened in and closed down the Respondent. My preliminary view was that this did not affect the referred matter, because the Respondent operated as a partnership and that partnership still existed, even if the legal practice run by that partnership had been closed down. I asked the parties and the intervening agents appointed by the SRA if they had any views on this, allowing them until 19 th March to file any submissions. I am grateful to them for their helpful responses.

87. The intervening agents have simply said that they have been appointed as such but that they have not taken on the Respondent’s practice or their clients’ matters.

88. Mr Ahmud has responded to acknowledge that the SRA has intervened in the practice of the firm as solicitors, but says that Bloomsbury Law Solicitors exists within the legal entity of Bloomsbury Law, which is a partnership and the partnership’s legal identity remains live. I am not entirely sure that a partnership known as Bloomsbury Law is necessarily relevant, because the only objector and the Respondent before the Tribunal is Bloomsbury Law Solicitors. But I think that the underlying point, which is that the partnership may continue to exist even if the legal practice has been closed down, is correct.

89. The Applicant argued that as the legal practice had been closed down, the Respondent could no longer enforce or maintain the restriction. I am not persuaded that this is correct, because the partnership still exists. I think I would need to have the benefit of much more detailed legal argument, supported by relevant legislation and authorities, before I could be satisfied that the intervention in and of itself is enough to mean that the restriction should be removed.

90. The Applicant also suggested that the circumstances of the intervention supported elements of her case. In my view, it would not be right for this Tribunal to give any weight to those circumstances in reaching its decision. I do not know what the responses of either the Respondent or Mr Ahmud to the allegations raised by the SRA are. In my judgment, it would be most unfair to both the Respondent and to Mr Ahmud personally to take any account of this when assessing the evidence.

91. It is, in any event, unnecessary to take that step when I had already reached the views that I have expressed above about Mr Ahmud’s credibility. For the avoidance of doubt, those views have been reached taking account only of the written and oral evidence that was before the Tribunal at the final hearing.

92. It will be a matter for the SRA to consider whether any of the findings in this decision or the wider circumstances of this case require any further investigation or action by them. Similarly, I note from the SRA’s publicly available records that although the Respondent firm was not intervened in and closed down until 18 th February 2026, Mr Ahmud is listed as having been suspended from 1 st November 2024. I do not know whether this has been backdated, but if not then it would call into question some of Mr Ahmud’s conduct in this case and evidence to the Tribunal. Again, those are matters for the SRA. He has also signed a claim form and particulars of claim in court proceedings between the parties as a solicitor. CONCLUSION

93. For the reasons given above, the Chief Land Registrar will be directed to give effect to the Applicant’s application.

94. As she has been successful in these proceedings, my preliminary view is that the Applicant is entitled to have her costs paid by the Respondent.

95. Both parties will have the opportunity to make submissions on what, if any, costs order should be made, bearing in mind that what I have expressed here is no more than a provisional view. The order that accompanies this decision gives directions for the consideration of any costs applications. Dated this 25 th March 2026 Judge Robert Brown By Order of The Tribunal