Transitional plans for Consumer Panel Chair announced as LSB welcomes Annual Report

29 June 2011

The Legal Services Board (LSB) today welcomes the publication of the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s first Annual Report. The report, covering the first full year of operation for the body, sets out progress against a range of work designed to promote the interests of consumers in the legal services market.

David Edmonds, Chairman of the LSB, also announces the resignation, from the end of July, of Baroness Hayter, the inaugural Chair of the Consumer Panel. This is because of Baroness Hayter’s other commitments in the House of Lords.

An interim Chair will now be appointed, from within the existing Panel membership, with a term running up to 31 March 2013. A separate announcement on the appointment will be made in due course.

LSB Chairman David Edmonds said:

The range and quality of the work covered in the Consumer Panel’s annual report reflects the powerful mark it has already made on the regulatory landscape. Since the panel started work, it has produced substantial new evidence, based on research and analysis, which has contributed significantly to the Board’s policy thinking. The Panel’s focus on the interests of the consumer is an essential counter-balance in an industry where producer interests are powerfully entrenched.

Much of the credit for the successes to date goes to Dianne Hayter, whose insight and determination to rest the work of the panel on hard evidence has underpinned its credibility. Her work in launching and embedding the Consumer Panel has made a real difference to the thinking of the LSB and increasingly to that of the Legal Ombudsman and the other regulators. I am sorry that her workload elsewhere means that after two years she is leaving the role. I would like to thank her most warmly for the important contribution she has made.

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