Chair's Board Update November 2023

We considered progress over the last year and looked forward to the year ahead. Here are a few of the highlights. Full minutes will be published on our website in the usual way.

• Future Regulatory Arrangements: The Board considered carefully the responses published to the recent CILEX consultation. We noted that many parties had echoed the comments in our own response published last month that any changes to the current arrangements needed much stronger evidence that they would be in be in the public and consumer interest. We also noted that the Law Society and Legal Services Consumer Panel had also expressed concerns about CILEX’s proposals to introduce a range of new titles. We considered next steps including on the important issues of legal authority we have raised.
• Business Planning: The Board received a report on performance against 2023 strategic objectives and congratulated the team on the good progress made in difficult circumstances. We then considered our strategic priorities for 2024 which include further work on ongoing competence, reviewing the Code of Conduct and guidance, evaluation of the existing transparency rules, refreshing our enforcement rules, and (if the current uncertainty can be resolved) progressing our plans to make it easier to set up companies. We will publish our full Plan in the next few weeks.
• Performance: we reviewed our financial performance for the first eight months of 2023 and were pleased to see overall a strong operating surplus ahead of budget. On operations we welcomed the submission to the LSB of our Higher Rights application, reviewed progress on enforcement, and were pleased to learn how well Chartered Legal Executives are doing in gaining practice rights via the University of Law assessments.
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: we agreed our annual report on EDI Strategy which we will publish shortly. The Board was pleased to see improvements in data capture and reaffirmed its commitment to a long-term programme to build the evidence base and work in partnership to tackle deep-rooted structural issues.
• People: finally, we welcomed John Barwick to his first Board as our new interim Chief Executive, and wished him well in his new role.

Our next planned Board catch-up is on 6 December with our next full meeting on 22 February 2024. As always if you want to know more, please look at our website, read our Board papers or get in touch.