Full papers for this meeting can already be read on our website, the full minutes will also be published at a later date. We remain fully committed to being an exemplar of transparency in the world of legal regulation. Highlights from the meeting included:
• Strategy 2025-7: the Board considered our priorities for 2025 under our four key strategic objectives: standards and public interest, access to justice and consumer empowerment, independence and sustainability, and our aim to be an authoritative, inclusive and capable organisation. We will be publishing our new three-year strategy shortly, and a detailed Plan for next year in the New Year.
• Regulatory Performance: we had a detailed update on our regulatory performance this year and were pleased to see continued improvement across the board. In particular we noted a 25% reduction over last year in the number of open misconduct cases, and an even bigger fall in the number of old cases as we introduce new ways of working. We had a full discussion on CPD and were encouraged to see a reduction of 25% in the last month in the number of Fellows who were non-compliant. We also received a brief report on the LSB’s report into the SRA’s failings on Axiom Ince, and noted that a lessons learned exercise is already underway within CRL. We will return to this at our next full Board meeting in the New Year.
• Finance: we received our regular report on finance and welcomed a continued strong performance. Against this background, we decided to freeze the fees for Qualifying Experience and Work Based Learning for 2025.
• Future Regulatory Arrangements: we had a discussion with our legal advisors on the latest position with CILEX’s proposals to redelegate regulation to the SRA. We reaffirmed our view that CILEX’s proposal is not lawful. More generally the Board agreed that a fuller review of the 2007 Legal Services Act and its operation was now timely. In this context we shall shortly be publishing some research we have commissioned on the unregulated legal sector with a view to a roundtable discussion in the New Year.
Our next planned Board catch-up is on 5 December with our next full meeting on 11 February 2025. As always if you want to know more, please look at our website, read our Board papers or get in touch.
