Professional Negligence Question: Criminal Solicitor (England)

Hi all, looking for some advice on whether this sounds like professional negligence and if it is worth pursuing.

I was criminally prosecuted between 2021 - 2023 and paid privately for my defence, around £40k to £50k in total. I paid privately, as I was told I did not qualify for legal aid.

I was fully acquitted at trial. There were no issues around acquittal (e.g. contentious issues or self-incrimination). A Defendants Costs Order would have been approved.

In April 2022, my solicitor asked me to complete a legal aid application "as a backup", so that if I was acquitted we could recover costs through a Defendant’s Costs Order. I completed everything and sent full financial evidence.

I have the email saved. I completed the form in full, and returned to her. She confirmed receipt, and would progress the application.

At the end of my trial, no defendants costs order was made. I was confused...

What I have since found out after getting my file is:

• The application was not submitted when I gave it to them. She did nothing with it, and submitted it delayed by 1.5 years
• It was only submitted days before trial in September 2023
• It was submitted using my old financial documents, as provided in 2021, which were out of date by then
• I was never asked to provide updated documents before submission
• The submitted version had errors, including a wrong date of birth, incorrect case number and incorrect contact details for the solicitor firm
• I never saw or approved this document

Most importantly:

• The Legal Aid Agency rejected the application and clearly asked for updated information, including recent payslips and updated supporting documents
• This was because the application had been submitted so late with outdated information
• My solicitor never contacted me to get updated documents, even though the LAA specifically asked for them
• They also never responded to the LAA at all, so the application was never progressed

I was never told about the rejection or that anything further was needed from me.

Because of this, there was no valid legal aid application or refusal in place at the time of acquittal, and no Defendant’s Costs Order was pursued. I have since been told that without this, I have lost the ability to recover my defence costs.

I only became aware of all of this much later after going through complaints, as I had originally been told that recovering costs was something the CPS dealt with.

It seems like they delayed the application, submitted it in a defective state, then ignored a clear opportunity to fix it, and never involved me at any stage. This has cost me the chance to recover part of my legal fees, likely in the region of £10,000 to £15,000.

Does this sound like professional negligence, and is it realistically worth pursuing given the value of the claim?

Thanks in advance.