Today, the Legal Service Board (LSB) published a new approach to regulatory performance. It invites the frontline legal regulators to take the lead on demonstrating that they are well-led and have an effective approach to regulating in the public interest.
Effective regulation protects and benefits the public while supporting leadership, growth, and innovation. The new framework more explicitly puts the regulatory objectives at the heart of regulatory decision-making while giving the regulators greater autonomy to decide how best to deliver against those objectives, ensuring that they regulate in the public interest. The approach will enable the LSB to continue holding the regulators to account and drive improvements that benefit the thousands of people and small businesses who need legal services each year.
The new approach encourages regulators to continually improve their performance and strive to be well-led, effective, and efficient. It is also sufficiently flexible to account for developments in the legal services market and the policy environment.
Dr Helen Phillips, Chair of the Legal Services Board, said:
‘Assessing regulators’ performance and holding them to account is one of the LSB’s important functions. The new framework sets out our expectations more clearly than ever before while giving regulators greater freedom to decide how to provide assurance that they are meeting the standards. It enhances regulators’ autonomy and emphasises their board’s responsibility to demonstrate that they meet all the regulatory objectives and have the leadership, capacity, and capability to do so.’
The new regulatory performance framework will take effect from 1 January 2023, and the first assessment under it will take place in Summer 2023.
-ENDS
Note to editor
The consultation on the revised regulatory performance assessment framework will be from 7 April 2022 to 1 July 2022. The responses have been published on our website.