Wednesday, 10 December 2014
LSB launches consultation on 2015-18 strategic plan and 2015/16 business plan
The Legal Services Board (LSB) launches today a consultation on its draft 2015-18 strategic plan and draft 2015/16 business plan. Views are welcome from everyone with an interest in legal services and the wider legal services community.
The LSB is proposing to structure its work around the twin objectives of:
- breaking down regulatory barriers to competition, growth and innovation; and
- enabling need for legal services to be met more effectively.
Running alongside will be a continuing programme of work to drive up regulatory performance, evaluate the market and make statutory decisions, including decisions on regulators’ requests to change their regulatory arrangements.
Underpinning the plans is a research programme designed to keep the LSB in touch with the real-world challenges faced by regulators, consumers and legal professionals.
Legal Services Board Chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, said:
"Legal services are a vital part of the economy. In the last year, the sector grew to an annual turnover of just over £29bn, up 15 per cent in six years. They bring inward investment and new jobs beyond the boundaries of the sector itself. They are also a critical part of the structure of our civil society, delivering wider public interest objectives such as the rule of law. But it is a sector undergoing profound change in terms of consumer requirements, market developments and government policy.
This exceptional growth and these significant changes present opportunities. The LSB intends to respond by freeing up legal practitioners to adapt, grow and innovate. Our goal is to ensure that citizens’ legal needs are met as effectively as possible whilst, at the same time, efficiently discharging our on-going statutory responsibilities.
Our work will take into account the role played by both regulated and unregulated legal service providers, since this is the reality of the market in which consumers make choices and in which practitioners compete. We also plan to collaborate with the widest possible range of consumer and legal services bodies, and to share knowledge with regulators in other sectors of the economy.
This consultation represents an opportunity for legal practitioners, their representative bodies, third party organisations and anyone with an interest in legal services to help shape the vital work we are doing to modernise legal services."
ENDS
For further information, please contact LSB Communications Manager Vincent McGovern or by calling 020 7271 0068.
Notes for editors:
- Further information on the draft strategic plan 2015-18 and business plan 2015/16 consultation can be found here.
- The LSB proposes to maintain its budget for 2015/16 at the 2014/15 level which is a total of £4,298,000. Maintaining the budget at this level amounts to a decrease in real terms. Further information can be found on pages 40 to 41 of the document.
- In an effort to facilitate thinking two workshops have been arranged for the 26 January (14:00 - 16:00) and 6 February (10:30 - 12:30) 2015. For further information or should you wish to attend please email lsbevents@legalservicesboard.org.uk.
- The closing date for the consultation is Friday 20 February 2015.
- The Legal Services Act 2007 (the Act) created the LSB as a new regulator with responsibility for overseeing the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. The new regulatory regime became active on 1 January 2010.
- The LSB oversees nine approved regulators, which in turn regulate individual legal practitioners. The approved regulators, designated under Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the 2007 Act, are the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Master of the Faculties, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, the Association of Costs Lawyers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
In addition, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants are listed as approved regulators in relation only to reserved probate activities.
- As at 1 April 2014, the legal profession comprised 138,243 solicitors, 326 alternative business structures, 15,279 barristers, 7,927 chartered legal executives and 5,404 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing. The sector was valued at £29.2 billion in 2013 (total turnover).