Law Society faces £200,000 bill after shelving plans for grandiose HQ

The Law Society has wasted up to £200,000 in fees paid to lawyers and architects working on grandiose plans to build a £40m headquarters that were rejected by its ruling council.

The scheme would have brought the regulatory arm of the Law Society under one roof. But the solicitors' ruling body has rejected the project, arguing that it is too expensive and too luxurious a design. One council member objecting to the plan said it would become a target for terrorism, while another criticised the timing of the development at the "peak of a property boom".

In council papers, released by the Law Society of England and Wales, the plans include a building of 122,000 square feet on a development known as Warwick Gates, two miles outside Leamington Spa.

The documents reveal that the Law Society has already incurred £189,500 costs, mostly in consultancy fees. These include £17,000 for the services of a project manager, £10,000 to a solicitor and £30,000 to an architect. Some £117,500 due for for property consultancy is contingent upon the Law Society completing a "legally binding contract for the purchase of a building". Now that Warwick Gates has been shelved, the property consultants are expected to resubmit their bill.

A Law Society spokesman said: "Council has approved an increase in regulation staff. The senior management team are working to identify the necessary additional accommodation in the Midlands."

Law Society leaders had tried to persuade council members that more space was needed to accommodate additional lawyers recruited to beef up its regulatory role. The council has already committed an additional £21m over three years for tightening regulation and inspection of law firms.

Janet Paraskeva, chief executive of the Law Society, who supported the £40m plan, acknowledges that there "would be a large financial outlay at first". But she believed, in the long term, that the scheme would prove to be cost effective.

Council members had also expressed concerns that if the Government decided to remove the Law Society's right to self-regulation, the project could become a white elephant. There was no guarantee, the council said, that ministers would compensate the Law Society for the loss of its latest investment.

But Ms Paraskeva told a ruling council meeting in December that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, had "no immediate plans" to end self-regulation. She said the "parliamentary secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Department had recently said the legal profession should be independent and self-regulating".