This was our last Board meeting of 2022, and it was a coming together of a number of work strands which have been in development for some months now. Our focus as a Board continues to be on further advancing the Reshaping Legal Services strategy and addressing those challenges through innovative approaches. Significantly, exploring how we can use our convening power to best effect and drive forward collaboration in the sector and beyond also shaped our discussions at this meeting.
Delivering our strategic vision: LSB draft business plan 2023/24
We began by discussing our draft business plan and budget for 2023/24. This sets out our proposed programme of activity for next year to address the challenges we identified in our strategy for the sector. We plan to continue several important areas of policy development next year, including on rule of law, equality, diversity and inclusion, and technology. We will also be investing time to ensure that our revised regulatory performance framework is implemented effectively.
Among our proposed new workstreams, we intend to build upon our previous work around consumer vulnerability, including a focus on how inclusive design principles could be applied in legal services. We also intend to carry out more market surveillance work, so that we are able to get a better understanding of the legal services market, developments affecting our key stakeholders, and risks to delivery of the strategy.
There was an interesting discussion on the continued challenges around access to justice. We noted that issues such as the increasing court backlogs are making some of the challenges we identified in our Strategy even more pressing. Even though some of the drivers here are outside of our direct control, we agreed it was important to continue making use of our regulatory levers and convening powers to seek to influence progress in tackling these barriers. The Board is keen to have further discussions on this and we are likely to return to this area in the new year.
In order to deliver this business plan, we will need to increase our resource, and we agreed to consult on a proposed budget of £4.679m, which represents an increase of £392k (9.1%) on the 2022/23 budget. Adjusted for inflation, this equates to a decrease of 2% compared to last year. As always, we have challenged ourselves to keep our resources to the minimum level required to respond effectively to the scale of the challenges that the sector is facing. In our discussion, the Board reflected that this really was the minimum amount necessary to resource the proposed business plan, which we consider will be essential to driving the improved outcomes for consumers and the public, which are more important than ever as the cost of living crisis bites.
We will launch a consultation on the draft business plan and budget from early December and will be convening a stakeholder event, open to all, in January 2023. The Board will consider the feedback we receive to the consultation, as well as the final business plan and budget for 2023/24, at its March 2023 meeting.
Reinforcing the importance of effective evaluation
The Board spent some time discussing our Reshaping Legal Services conference, held back in October. We reflected on the success of the conference as a means of maintaining momentum in our sector-wide mission to deliver the ambitions set out in our Reshaping Legal Services strategy. We were pleased that so many people from across the sector attended and contributed to the day, and in particular, that so many attendees went away influenced to do something differently to improve diversity and inclusion, public trust or professional ethics.
We also turned our minds to how we can develop the event for next year, including exploring different format options and how we can use our convening power most effectively to bring an even more diverse range of voices into the discussion.
You can register your interest in attending Reshaping Legal Services 2023 online.
OLC draft budget 2023/24 and mid-year progress review
The Board also considered the Office for Legal Complaints’ (OLC) draft budget and business plan for 2023/24. This was an early discussion ahead of the Board formally approving the OLC budget in March next year. We began by reviewing the progress of the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) over the past year, and heard from LeO about the progress that has been made in a number of areas. The Board was disappointed, however, that LeO is currently forecasting to fall short of its minimum year-end targets in a number of key areas, and discussed with OLC and LeO colleagues the reasons for the forecast shortfall and the adequacy of the actions in place to mitigate this. We will be seeking further clarity on what would be considered by the OLC Board to be an acceptable outturn by year-end.
Turning to the OLC’s budget proposals for 2023/24, the Board heard that the proposed uplift in budget was driven by inflationary pressures and the cost of living crisis, and acknowledged LeO’s concerns around appropriately remunerating its staff, specifically addressing pay differences in the market, in light of the high levels of staff attrition in the organisation. The Board also explored with OLC and LeO colleagues what their contingency plans were should the proposed uplift not be possible under the pay remit that will be issued by the Ministry of Justice next year.
External Board evaluation
As part of the meeting, we also reviewed our external Board evaluation report, and on the basis of the very helpful discussion we had, we will be developing an action plan to ensure that the Board remains focused on delivery of the strategy for the sector as my term as Chair draws to a close at the end of March 2023. This very positive Board evaluation looked in depth at our governance arrangements, encapsulated in the Corporate Governance Manual, also on the agenda for discussion at this meeting, and also at our risk management approach – and at this meeting the Board reviewed the latest version of the corporate risk register.
I would like to round off my last blog of the year by extending my thanks to all who have collaborated with us over the last year – we look forward to continuing to progress our mission to deliver fairer outcomes, stronger confidence and better services.
The next Board meeting takes place on 24 January 2023.