The Legal Service Board (LSB) has published a new approach to regulatory performance. It invites the front line legal regulators to take the lead on demonstrating that they are well-led and have an effective approach to regulating in the public interest.
The LSB say effective regulation protects and benefits the public while supporting leadership, growth, and innovation. The new framework more explicitly puts the regulatory objectives at the heart of regulatory decision-making while giving the regulators “greater autonomy” to decide how best to deliver against those objectives, ensuring that they regulate in the public interest.
This approach will facilitate holding regulators to account and driving improvements that benefit the thousands of people and small businesses who need legal services each year, the LSB suggest.
The new approach encourages regulators to continually improve their performance and strive to be well-led, effective, and efficient. It is also sufficiently flexible to account for developments in the legal services market and the policy environment.
Dr Helen Phillips, Chair of the Legal Services Board, said:
“Assessing regulators’ performance and holding them to account is one of the LSB’s important functions. The new framework sets out our expectations more clearly than ever before while giving regulators greater freedom to decide how to provide assurance that they are meeting the standards. It enhances regulators’ autonomy and emphasises their board’s responsibility to demonstrate that they meet all the regulatory objectives and have the leadership, capacity, and capability to do so.”
The new regulatory performance framework will take effect from 1st January 2023, and the first assessment under it will take place in Summer 2023.
Click here to read the new regulatory framework.
