We hold the legal services regulators to account for their performance. This is key to delivering public confidence in legal services and is one of our statutory functions. By assessing regulators’ performance, we drive improvements in how they regulate and encourage them to be well-led organisations that strive to be more effective and efficient.
We monitor, review and assess regulators under our regulatory performance assessment framework to ensure they meet the expected standard of performance across the regulatory performance standards. More detail about the framework, including about the sourcebook and process documents, is set out below.
Our current and previous reports on regulators’ performance can be found on the following webpages:
Our current regulatory performance framework
Our regulatory performance framework, which came into force on 1 January 2023, is proportionate, risk-based and evidence-based.
The following documents set out in detail how we assess regulators’ performance under the framework:
- Regulatory Performance Assessment Framework: Sourcebook of Standards and Characteristics (current version updated August 2024)
- Regulatory Performance Assessment Framework: Process
Through our framework, we determine whether regulators have provided us with assurance that they meet three regulatory performance standards:
- Well-led: Regulators are well-led with the resources and capability required to work for the public and to meet the regulatory objectives effectively.
- Effective approach to regulation: Regulators act on behalf of the public to apply their knowledge to identify opportunities and address risks to meeting the regulatory objectives.
- Operational delivery: Regulators’ operational activity (e.g. education and training, authorisation, supervision, enforcement) is effective and clearly focused on the public interest.
These standards are supported by 20 characteristics which describe the features of effective regulators (e.g. knowledge, processes). The standards and characteristics require regulators and their boards to take ownership of the statutory regulatory objectives and provide assurance that they are well-led and effective in their approach to, and delivery of, regulation for the public.
Our approach to the assessment of the regulators’ performance against the standards and supporting characteristics is evidence-based.
To assure ourselves about regulators’ performance, we ask regulators to provide assurance of their performance and will expect:
- evidence of how their own programmes of activities are designed to meet the regulatory objectives and deliver their own outcomes; and
- evidence which shows that they meet the standards and demonstrate the characteristics of a regulator that is well-led and effective in its approach to, and delivery of, regulation.
The standards and characteristics are high level and we do not prescribe how the regulators should demonstrate that they meet the standards. We recognise that this will vary across the regulators and that performance against some standards may need to be assessed within the context of a specific regulator.
We consider that regulators are best placed to demonstrate how they meet the standards. To assess their performance, we will consider a range of evidence including documents published by the regulators, those supplied to us by the regulators and also feedback from stakeholders, where relevant. If a regulator is unable to assure the LSB that it meets the performance standards from the available evidence or we have other reasons to be concerned about its performance, we may undertake a review of the regulator’s performance against one or more of the standards.
Updates to our current regulatory framework
The Regulatory Performance Assessment Framework: Sourcebook of Standards and Characteristics is a living document which we have committed to reviewing annually. The latest version of the Sourcebook was published in August 2024. The original version of the Sourcebook was published in October 2022.
Transition to our current regulatory performance assessment framework
Our current framework came into force on 1 January 2023. We considered several options about how best to introduce it. Following a consultation, we concluded that we would take a hybrid approach for our 2022 performance assessment. This meant that we assessed regulators’ performance against our previous (2018-2022) framework’s standards and outcomes but using narrative assessments and the current framework’s rating system. This approach enabled us to realise some of the current framework’s benefits and also provided an opportunity for the LSB and regulators to gain experience of elements of it prior to our first assessment under it in June 2023.
Development of our current framework
We published our current framework in October 2022. It came into force on 1 January 2023 and the first assessment under it will take place in June 2023.
Our current framework is the result of a review of our previous one and a consultation we conducted in 2021 and 2022. It benefits from our and regulators’ experience of our previous framework as well as what we learned from our review and our consultation with stakeholders and interested parties.
We reviewed our approach to ensure that the framework:
- encompasses all the regulatory objectives in the Legal Services Act 2007
- enhances regulators’ autonomy
- emphasises regulators and their boards’ responsibility to demonstrate they meet all the regulatory objectives and have the leadership, capacity and capability to do so
- encourages regulators to continually improve their performance
Further information on how we developed our current regulatory performance framework can be found in the closed consultations section of our website and the related response to consultation document (PDF).
Previous performance frameworks
The LSB’s previous framework was introduced in 2018.
We published our previous framework in 2017 and following an 18-month transitional period we fully implemented it in 2019. It was developed following a review of our original framework and a consultation we conducted in 2017. Information about how we developed our second framework can be found in the closed consultations section of our website and the related decision document (PDF) a review of our original one and a consultation we conducted in 2017. Information on how we developed our second regulatory performance framework can be found in the closed consultations section of our website and the related decision document (PDF).
Information about our framework from 2018-2022 is below: