claim letter?

[bunny80]

My wife and I have been waiting for over 4 months for the HO to send us our new residence card/certif and return our passports but all we've gotten so far is our bank statements (we won our appeal in Feb this year and our solicitor sent the official request a month later). I've contacted my MP but haven't heard anything from them, that was 2 weeks ago. Our solicitor now says they should ''do a letter before claim, in light of their delay, requesting that you be issued with your permits within 21 days'' which would cost another 100£.

Now I don't want to spend more money to get the HO to do their job since I've already spent thousands so what else can I do? Can I send the claim letter myself or is it only done through a solicitor? The HO won't even tell us if they've lost our papers, getting any kind of info from them is a lost cause.

Thanks for any advice!