Chair's Board Update February 2024

We welcomed the publication last month, of our Corporate Plan for 2024, and its positive reception. We agreed to begin work on our next three-year strategy (2025-2027), and to begin engagement on this later in the Spring. We also noted the LSB’s Regulatory Performance Assessment report published on 20 February. We will be considering the report and the progress we are making against the LSB’s standards at our next Board meeting in March.   Here are a few of the other highlights. Full minutes will be published on our website in the usual way.

• Future Regulatory Arrangements: The Board discussed the latest position in the light of last month’s SRA Board, various announcements from CILEX, the growing evidence of CILEX members’ concerns, and the public position of others like the Law Society. We continue to take the view that redelegation on the lines proposed is neither lawful nor in the public interest and agreed to continue to contribute positively to the ongoing debate.
• Finance: we received the draft end-year results for 2023 and were pleased to see that we had an operational surplus. Subject to a satisfactory audit, we will publish the full figures in the early Summer.
• Performance: we reviewed our operational performance for last year and were pleased with the good progress made. Since our last meeting the LSB have approved our applications for new Higher Rights, and also our proposed Practising Certificate Fee which we have again been able to freeze at current rates notwithstanding inflationary pressures. We welcomed a continued improvement in handling enforcement cases, as well as a nearly two thirds reduction in the number of Fellows non-compliant with CPD in the last quarter of 2023. We agreed a new Risk appetite for our work which we will publish shortly.
• Annual Complaints Report: we received our annual report on corporate complaints and were pleased to see that we received only 5 complaints last year, a 100% improvement on the previous year and a remarkably small number given the number of enforcement and other cases we handle.

Our next planned Board catch-up is on 20 March with our next full meeting and annual strategy session on 16 and 17 May. As always if you want to know more, please look at our website, read our Board papers or get in touch.