Friday 02 November 2012 by Catherine Baksi

The Solicitors Regulation Authority says it is working to address 'volume issues' experienced by some solicitors trying to renew their practising certificates through the mySRA website.

This year's registration process began only yesterday, but some solicitors have already reported to the Gazette that the website is unavailable.

A service message from the SRA to solicitors yesterday said: 'We are currently experiencing very high levels of usage. We are investigating this issue. If you can't log in at the moment, please try again later. We apologise for any inconvenience.'

It was followed by another message today: 'Some users are experiencing difficulties logging in to mySRA. We are investigating the issue. If you can't log in at the moment, please try again later. We apologise for any inconvenience.'

However the SRA denied that the online service was out of action. By 4.30pm on Thursday 952 applications were going through the process, it said.

An SRA spokesperson said today: 'We are still processing applications. There are volume issues at present, which are limiting the number of users who can access the system at any one time. We are working with colleagues in Law Society IT and external suppliers to address these issues as soon as possible.'

Before yesterday's go-live the SRA expressed confidence that the renewal process would be smoother than last year, when thousands of solicitors missed the renewal deadline due to problems with the newly introduced online portal.

A Law Society spokesman said today: 'The system is working, but we're aware that some members have encountered frustrating delays. We will continue to feed back their experiences to our SRA colleagues. The initial surge of activity has caused some volume issues which, we understand, are being addressed.'