Complaints information, and where the SRA badge belongs
Complaints information and the SRA digital badge do two different jobs. Complaints information is text a reader needs when something has gone wrong. The badge is a graphic that signals regulated status. The transparency rules have been in force since 6 December 2018, and displaying a badge proves nothing on its own.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
Who is reading a complaints page, and what are they looking for?
Two people, in opposite states, arriving at the same page for opposite reasons.
The first has a live problem. Something has gone wrong, they are already unhappy, and they want one thing: who to contact, and what happens next. They are not reading. They are scanning for a name, an address and a sequence. Every sentence that is not one of those three is in the way.
The second is deciding whether to instruct the firm at all. They have no complaint. They are checking that a route exists, in the way somebody checks a fire exit without intending to use it. What reassures them is not the content of the page but the fact that it is there, plainly labelled, and not hidden.
Those two readers pull the page in different directions, and the resolution is ordinary: put the sequence first for the person who needs it, and make the page easy to find for the person who only wants to know it exists. Firms move the page because it feels like an invitation. The doubt it answers does not go away when the page does.
| Object | The job it does | Where it belongs | How it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Complaints information | Tells a reader what to do when something has gone wrong | Its own page, reachable in one click from anywhere, and linked from every service page | Footer-only, unlabelled, or written as a paragraph rather than a sequence |
| The SRA digital badge | Signals regulated status | Wherever the firm chooses to display it, alongside — never instead of — the firm's own statement of its regulated status | Broken image, no alternative text, presented as an endorsement of a supplier |
What does a complaints page need to contain to be usable?
A sequence a worried person can follow without a second reading.
In practice that means: who to contact first inside the firm, by name or role, with a route that is not only a general enquiry form. What the firm will do when it receives the complaint, and roughly how long its own process takes. What the reader can do if the firm's own process does not resolve it. Where the firm's regulated status and the name of its regulator are stated.
We do not draft any of that from memory. The external route has its own conditions and time limits, and this pack holds none of them. That wording comes from the firm or its own advisers, and we lay it out. A supplier who writes a firm's complaints route from what it half-remembers has created a document the firm will answer for.
Two format points that are genuinely ours to make. Write it as numbered steps rather than prose, because the person reading it is not reading carefully. And put a real contact route on it — the reader who has already had a bad experience with the general enquiry form will not use the general enquiry form.
Where does the badge sit, and what breaks it?
It is an image or an embed, so it fails the way images and embeds fail.
This is the part suppliers skip, because it feels beneath the topic. It is not. A badge is a piece of the page, and every ordinary failure of a piece of a page applies to it.
- It can fail to load. An asset served from somewhere else can be blocked, slow, or gone. A page whose only statement of regulated status is a graphic says nothing when the graphic is missing.
- It can have no alternative text. Anybody using a screen reader, and anything reading the page as text, gets nothing at all.
- It can be the only place the information appears. The firm's own statement of who regulates it, in text, should stand on its own. The badge sits beside that, not in place of it.
- It can be read as an endorsement of the wrong party. A badge on a page about a marketing supplier's work invites exactly the reading nobody should encourage.
That last point is a hard line here. No regulator approves marketing suppliers. Any supplier presenting itself as approved, endorsed or accredited by a regulator is making a false claim of official sanction, and it is the single fastest way to make everything else on a page unbelievable to this audience.
What will we not say about the badge?
Three things, and we would rather say so than guess.
- How it is obtained, and who is entitled to display it. We have not read those conditions in a source we can cite, so we do not describe them.
- What displaying it means about a firm's position. Nothing, on its own. Whether a firm meets its obligations is a judgement for the firm and its COLP, and no graphic changes that.
- What happens if it is displayed when it should not be. That is a question for the firm's own advisers.
The commercial context makes the restraint worth stating out loud. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 8 claimed a guarantee of some kind and 1 offered work with no minimum term. In a market shaped like that, declining to describe something we have not read is a differentiator rather than a weakness.
What does the work cost, and what will it not do?
Published and fixed, before anybody speaks to you.
| Product | Price |
|---|---|
| Price Transparency Pack | £890, ten working days |
| Firm Site | £2,400 |
| Firm Site+ | £4,200 |
| Authority Build | £6,900 |
| Retainer, monthly | £600 · £1,200 · £2,400, no minimum term |
Take £700 off a build taken with six months of retainer. Nothing is priced per enquiry, per matter or per client, because LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business and binds the paying firm as well as the party paid.
For scale, £890 is roughly 60 Sheffield conveyancing clicks at Google's own price of £14.83, measured 3 August 2026. 60 × £14.83 = £889.80. Arithmetic on a click price, not a forecast.
What we will not do: write the complaints route, obtain a badge, or tell a firm whether it is entitled to display one. We build and place what the firm gives us, and we will say when a page is missing.
Whether your own site meets this
The check takes about two minutes and lists which of the items above are absent from your site, including whether a complaints route can be reached in one click. It is not a compliance assessment — that judgement belongs to the firm and its COLP — and it is free either way.
If you want the pages built rather than listed, the Price Transparency Pack is £890 and takes ten working days.
Where should I read next?
On what the rules ask to be published, and what "published" means for a web page: what the SRA transparency rules require on a website.
On the fee page itself: price transparency pages, what good looks like, and on where a complaints link sits inside the order a client reads a page in, solicitor website design.
Further out: lead generation for law firm, personal injury law firm SEO, small law firm website design, law firm website design cost and law firm website design services.
Frequently asked questions
Is complaints information the same thing as the SRA digital badge?
No. Complaints information is text telling a reader what to do when something has gone wrong. The badge is a graphic that signals regulated status. They do different jobs and neither substitutes for the other.
Does displaying the badge make a firm compliant?
No. Whether a firm meets its obligations is a judgement for the firm and its COLP, and no graphic on a web page changes that. A badge is a mark, not an assessment.
Where should complaints information sit?
On its own page, plainly labelled, reachable in one click from anywhere, and linked from every service page. Footer-only placement makes it findable by people who already know it exists and by nobody else.
Who is actually reading the complaints page?
Two people. One has a live problem and is scanning for who to contact and what happens next. The other has no complaint and is checking that a route exists before instructing. The first needs a sequence, the second needs the page to be easy to find.
Will you write our complaints route for us?
No. The external route has conditions and time limits we have not sourced, and a supplier drafting them from memory creates a document the firm answers for. The wording comes from the firm or its own advisers, and we lay it out.
Can a marketing supplier be approved by the SRA?
No regulator approves marketing suppliers. Any supplier describing itself as approved, endorsed or accredited by a regulator is making a false claim of official sanction.
What can go wrong with a badge technically?
It can fail to load, carry no alternative text, be the only place regulated status is stated, or be placed where it reads as an endorsement of the supplier rather than the firm. All four are ordinary web problems rather than regulatory ones.