Beginning An Accountancy Negligence Compensation Claim

Many clients feel quite apprehensive about taking on their accountant in an accountancy negligence claim. This is because they are questioning a professional and are always fearful that they will come out loosing the claim and wasting money on legal fees. However this should not be the case. Professional negligence cases are not as complicated and difficult as people fear. Not only this, but with these types of cases a solicitor will be able to see pretty early on whether or not you have a decent chance of success or not.

There are numerous sorts of incident which can lead to an accountancy negligence claim. Here are some examples: wrong advice about what tax or VAT you have outstanding or they may have missed some crucial facts which detirmined their advice and thus made it wrong. They may have delayed on a payment which has incurred a fee or a late submission charge from HMRC. More serious occurrences can be where the accountant has grossly under or overvalued some assets or incorrect prepared an audit.

Nevertheless, irrelevant of the act of negligence in order to bring a successful professional negligence claim the client must have experienced two things which are connected. Firstly they must have suffered financial loss and secondly this financial loss must have been caused as a direct result of the negligence. One of these factors on their own is not enough to win a case of this kind, you must be able to demonstrate both.

One thing to think about is whether or not the solicitor will take on your claim if you have only endured a small amount of financial loss. For example many will put a limit of £10,000 of the amount of loss which has been suffered. This is to make sure your case is worth taking on. Nevertheless, even if you have lost less than this amount it is always worth getting in touch with a solicitor, this is because claims are usually assessed on a case by case basis.

One main concern of clients is that an accountancy negligence claim will take an extremely long time and will not be resolved without it being dragged through the court process. However in the modern day it is quite probable that your case will be resolved outside of court and process fairly quickly. If your professional negligence solicitor believes that your case has a high chance of success, the quicker you will probably see your case resolved.


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Considering making a professional negligence claim against your accountant? Bonallack & Bishop are solicitors specialising in accountancy negligence claims. Tim Bishop is senior partner at the firm, responsible for all major decisions.