Our final full Board meeting of the year took place on 9 December 2025. The minutes will be published on our website in the usual way, but in the meantime, here are a few of the highlights.
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- Litigation Practice Rights: we spent a significant amount of time considering the current state of play following the Mazur judgment, the LSB’s approval of standalone litigation rights, and CILEX’s decision to appeal the Mazur judgment. We recognised the continuing uncertainty and distress felt by many of those we regulate and agreed we should continue to focus on making available practice rights to all those who want them consistent with our duty to maintain standards. In this respect we noted that 460 CLEs had already applied to us for rights through the portfolio route, and another 366 had applied for the December 2025 and January 2026 assessments by ULaw. We were pleased to see that resources had been reallocated to deal with this exceptional demand, that 20 additional assessors had been recruited, and that 13 CLEs had already been authorised. We also noted the positive discussions held with some of the law firms most affected. We agreed we needed to maintain good communication with those affected, to update regularly our website, and to continue to meet representative groups. We also considered the response to the LSB’s s55 request.
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- Corporate Plan: we agreed our Corporate Plan for 2026 which will be published shortly. This sets out 6 key priorities for 2026: our response to Mazur, a review of our approach to enforcement, improving User experience, Equality Diversity and Inclusion (our 2026-28 Strategy was published last week), the future regulatory landscape and stakeholder engagement.
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- Governance: the Board agreed to an action plan following conclusion of an independent Board Effectiveness Review carried out in the autumn. This concluded that the CRL Board demonstrates a high level of Board Effectiveness in its governance, structures, process, and Board meeting behaviours. We agreed to appoint the CEO formally to the Board and recruit a Professional Board associate to bring more diversity and experience to the Board. We will now publish the Board review and action plan in line with our transparency commitments. We also had an update on the Stakeholder Survey currently underway and had a good discussion with the Chair of the Strategic Risk Committee.
- Operations: we had our regular series of reports on performance and were pleased to see improvements in a number of areas. For instance, CPD non-compliance is 30% lower than at the same point last year, 2 new training providers have been approved, and the year on year improvement in the time taken to process practice rights has been maintained with an average time of 10.6 weeks in the summer compared with 32 weeks in 2024. We had a brief report on the LSB investigation into the SRA’s failings on SSB and agreed to consider a fundamental review of our enforcement processes at our next meeting. We also discussed the Government’s decision to transfer Anti Money Laundering (AML) responsibility to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), approved our response to the Government’s consultation on this decision, and agreed to publish a three-year AML Strategy to cover the likely intervening period.
- Policy: we agreed a response to the Office of Legal Complaints consultation on its 2026/7 Business Plan – we are very concerned about the 12% cost increase proposed. We were pleased that the LSB had approved our application to improve first tier complaints handling which should help improve consumers’ experience.
Our next full Board meeting is on 10 February 2026. If you would like to know more, please look at our website, read our Board papers or get in touch. In the meantime, best wishes for a good Christmas break and a happy 2026.
