Our Board met on 26 October for its penultimate meeting of the year and discussed a variety of papers that look to 2022 and develop our plans for next year. In particular, after our most recent Board meeting’s strategy session on 21 September, we followed up by exploring a proposal for the LSB to convene a sector-wide conference in 2022. The conference would be an opportunity to take stock of progress in addressing the challenges facing the sector as outlined in Reshaping Legal Services: a sector-wide strategy, which also highlights the importance of collaboration across legal services. It would bring together all those with an interest in making the sector work better for the public, including regulators, professional bodies, consumer groups, legal services providers, judiciary, academics and many more groups. At this stage it is being considered for approval in our draft business plan (to be consulted on later in the year), but we hope it is nonetheless an exciting prospect.
The Board approved the proposed annual budget of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT). The application from the SDT was for approval of an operating budget of £3,156,354, which represents a 0.2% increase compared to the budget approved for 2021 (£3,150,607). Earlier in the month some Board members took part in a challenge panel meeting which allowed the LSB to scrutinise the SDT’s application in detail and to explore expectations for the future.
Finally, we discussed the progress in developing proposals for a ‘single digital register’ of authorised persons and the next steps for this work. In its 2020 report, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) highlighted that there is still no single source of information on regulated entities and professionals in the legal sector and recommended the development of a “single digital register” led by LSB. The discussion focused on progress made since the summer. The Board agreed that the proposals should focus on scoping the development of a centralised, cross-sector database of standardised regulatory information, which could be used to support a range of end products, from regulatory registers to third party comparison tools. In this regard, we agreed that the term ‘single digital register’ did not really do justice to the nature or potential of the work, to the point that it might actually be hindering progress.
The Board supported the next steps for the work, including the establishment of a Task and Finish Group to focus on the scope, design and implementation of a potential database and the scoping and commissioning of a proof-of-concept study. We look forward to hearing more about this project in early 2022.
The next Board meeting is the final one of 2021 and will be held on Tuesday 30 November.