On 26 November, we held our final Board meeting for 2024. More of that in a moment, but first I want to reflect on another busy year.
It has been a year of change – not least bringing a new Chief Executive – but also of continuity. We have continued, for example, to work towards the goals of the Reshaping Legal Services strategy: fairer outcomes, stronger confidence, better services across the sector.
We have achieved some important policy milestones, and we have continued to strengthen our direct oversight of legal services regulation. This has meant building on our solid foundations of statutory decision-making, research, and performance assessment – the latter bolstered by our new regulatory review team – and other activities all focussed squarely on the public interest.
LSB business plan 25/26: policy priorities
At November’s Board meeting, we looked at what might continue and what might change next year, as a key task was to agree the LSB’s draft business plan and budget for 2025/26. These have since been shared for public consultation on our website: available here.
The plan sets out five priority policy projects, two of which I’ll mention in more detail.
Professional ethics
In light of recent high-profile cases, this is an area of legal services that clearly needs significant attention if the profession is to uphold public confidence. We will consult next year on proposals that aim to support and empower ethical decision-making across the sector.
Our longer-term ambition is for improved awareness among all lawyers and their lay colleagues of the ethical responsibilities of the legal profession, and for strong professional and regulatory support for the maintenance of those responsibilities, sometimes in the face of unreasonable pressure. This will be a major undertaking, requiring collective action, and I’m keen to see how the work develops.
Consumer protections
This second policy project relates to consumer risk, and specifically to the risks introduced through developments in the legal services market. With large law firms failing, and a growth in both third-party litigation funding and group claims, we need to understand the scale and proximity of the risks and the potential implications for consumers.
These issues are complex, cutting across multiple sectors and regulatory regimes. We are working closely with legal and financial services regulators to explore what coordinated action may be necessary to deliver effective policy solutions.
Other areas of focus
Alongside ethics and consumer protections, we are also planning to proceed with policy projects relating to advancing equality and diversity in the legal sector, access to justice, and disciplinary and enforcement processes.
And we will continue to strengthen our direct regulatory oversight, as mentioned above, as the number of statutory decisions coming our way looks likely to increase. We will be monitoring how well our existing policies are being met by regulators, as well as pressing on with existing investigations.
LSB budget 2025/26
Our proposed budget for 2025/26 is £6.028million, a 14% increase from the previous year. It represents an addition of £3.84 in each authorised person’s practising fee.
We are conscious of the scale of this uplift, and that it falls at a time when there are proposed uplifts elsewhere in the sector. We have taken the step this year of including a contingency budget for currently unknown costs relating to a required office move for the LSB in 2025, and to pressures on our legal budget. Should any or all of the contingency sum not be required, it will be returned to the sector via a levy rebate.
More broadly, the budget reflects the resources we need to meet the scale of the challenges facing the legal sector. It remains vital that we are able to make sure that regulation remains focussed squarely on the public interest.
OLC business plan and budget for 2025/26
As one of our statutory duties, we are required to approve the annual budget of the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). In our meeting, we were joined by colleagues from the OLC and the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) to review their budget and business plan proposals for 2025/26.
We noted that the LeO is seeing a growing demand for its services and that this reflects poorly on the sector: first-tier complaints are not being handled effectively, which leads frequently to issues being escalated to the ombudsman. That’s why, earlier this year, we issued requirements and guidance aiming to improve first-tier complaint handling. Regulators and providers need to ensure that complaints are dealt with effectively, efficiently, and fairly – and that lessons are learned and fed back into customer service approaches.
The OLC’s proposed budget for 2025/26 is £19.78million, which is an increase of 10.2% compared with 2024/25. The majority of this is to recruit new investigators, whose focus would be on reducing the queue of cases.
While we recognised the pressures under which LeO operates, we also raised some areas of concern. For example, we have previously requested greater transparency around Ombudsman decisions, and especially on the way in which they are made known to the public; the question now is how to deliver this in a cost-effective way.
The Board also noted OLC’s proposal to increase the case fee charged to providers when complaints are resolved in the consumer’s favour and where LeO assesses that the service provider had not taken reasonable steps to resolve the complaint. This fee has not changed in 14 years, so a review seems reasonable.
I look forward to the final plan in March when the OLC seeks approval of its budget, and I hope that the challenges we put forward will prove productive.
Boardroom Apprenticeship
At the end of the meeting, it was a pleasure to hear from Meena Sankar, who is now at the end of her term as a Boardroom Apprentice. Meena spoke about the scheme, her training, and her experience at the LSB.
I was delighted to hear that she has felt empowered to seek other non-exec roles. Meena will also help mentor the next cohort of Boardroom Apprentices, which I am sure will be of great value. We wish Meena the very best of luck as she takes her next steps.
As strong believers in the scheme and its aim to enable a wider diversity of individuals to play their part in boardrooms, we have also signed up to host an apprentice next year.
Registrations are now open for the Reshaping Legal Services conference 2025. For more information, and to book your place, please click the image below.
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