A solicitor has been struck off after showing incompetence and a “reckless disregard” for his client over a lease extension, it has been revealed.

David Gowland of DG Surveyors Ltd was also ordered by a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) disciplinary panel to pay costs of £13,925.

Deadline passed

His client Mr Horden, living in a flat in west London, had asked Gowland to handle a lease extension application to his freeholder, Hounslow Council.

After initially taking on the work, Gowland failed to inform Horden that he could apply to a tribunal when agreement with the council could not be reached.

When a deadline passed in May 2021 to apply to the tribunal, Horden’s application was considered withdrawn and he was liable to pay the council’s legal costs. Gowland failed to reply to many of Horden’s requests for information, and also ignored several letters from RICS.

Reckless disregard

The panel said it “considered that expulsion was the only sanction available to it, to ensure the public was protected from a professional who had demonstrated a reckless disregard for his client’s interests, persistently failed to engage with his client and his Regulator, and had demonstrated a level of incompetence”.

“Mr. Gowland’s conduct represented a serious abrogation of his responsibility to his client and one that other members of the profession would consider deplorable.”

Consequences

“The consequences for Mr. Horden, financially and personally, were significant,” the panel heard.

The panel took into account that Gowland had waived his fees, and had a “relatively lengthy career, during which he had no previous disciplinary history”.

Gowland’s firm DG Surveyors was wound up in September 2021.

Read the full judgement here.

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