Hayhoe: Review must be independent
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) and Legal Services Consumer Panel (LSCP) have both backed a radical review of the Legal Ombudsman (LeO).
The CLC said a “root and branch” review should not rule out a “total redesign of the scheme”, while the LSCP argued for an independent review “tasked with recommending radical transformation, not incremental change”.
In the consultation on its draft business plan and budget for 2026-27, the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC), LeO’s governing body, said a 12% (£2.4m) increase the current £20m budget was needed to cope with fast-rising levels of complaints and to conduct a radical review of how it operates.
The CLC said it accepted this budget rise “with great reluctance and significant reservations”; the LSCP’s support was conditional on an “externally led, independent review” and on the OLC “urgently” working with the panel and the Legal Services Board to tackle poor first-tier complaints handling “across the sector”.
The CLC “strongly” supported LeO’s proposals for the review, one that would “investigate options for wholesale transformation and reimagining of the LeO scheme, not least because the sector and consumers cannot sustain the year-on-year cost increases that we have seen in the last five years”.
A root-and-branch review was “overdue and entirely justified” against the background of a “rapidly evolving legal and technological landscape and changing consumer behaviour”.
To be effective, it must be “broad in scope and not rule out an overhaul and total redesign of the scheme”.
The CLC said the review should investigate, among other things, “outsourcing and flexible resourcing”, how complaints to LeO were triaged and managed from start to end, and greater use of artificial intelligence.
On the budget, the CLC accepted that the 12% increase was “necessary to avoid deterioration in service levels and turnaround times for consumers”.
The increase was “significant as against current levels of inflation and unsustainable in the longer term, and therefore demands greater accountability on performance and transparency on progress against the business plan”.
The CLC said the cost per case remained “unacceptably high”, especially given the proportion of investigations that resulted in no further action.
“Where an award is made, it is generally low value and dwarfed by the cost of the complaint handling. This is not a sustainable position.”
Tom Hayhoe, chair of the LSCP, said the panel strongly supported an “externally led, independent review” of LeO’s processes and operating model.
“Independence is essential both to maintain confidence and to ensure that LeO can continue to focus on delivering its statutory function.”
He said consumer journey times must also be addressed, as current waiting times averaging 275 days were “unacceptable”.
On the budget, he said: “In short, we support the additional funding provision, but only if it is used to enable transformation. Anything less will fail to address the systemic weaknesses that have left the service struggling and consumers poorly served.”
As we reported yesterday, the Law Society said in its response that it would only be appropriate for LeO to carry out a “limited review” and “premature” to do more, given the cost, resources required and lack of time since rule changes introduced in 2023 that were aimed at helping it cope with its workload. It opposed the 12% rise too.
I welcome the panel’s request for an independent review of the work of the Legal Ombudsman, but I doubt whether such a review could or should take place independently of a review of the Legal Service Act 2007
I am on the point of submitting a request to the Ministry of Justice for a public statutory inquiry into the failure of the Solicitors Regulation Authority to uphold the rule of law or promote and protect the interests of consumers
My request arises out of the evidence produced by the Carson McDowell report of October 2025 on the collapse of SSB Law with the loss of over £200million. The Carson McDowell report identified the failure of the SRA to meet the regulatory objectives of Section 1 and 28 of the Legal Services Act.2007
The failure of the oversight regulator the Legal Services Board was an important contributory factor in the failure of the SRA. I am therefore asking for a statutory public inquiry to study the reasons for that failure. Such an inquiry would be modelled on the successful Post Office inquiry
The inquiry would be able to require the presence of all the officials at every level who were thought to have contributed to the failure of the SRA. Complainants would have the opportunity to submit their case for reform. The SSB Support Group is at present negotiating with the SRA, but I suggest that the SRA has very little room to manoeuvre since the losses to consumers are at least £200million.
The oversight function of the Legal Services Board has never been effective. It took its first regulatory action under Section 29 of the Act in 2025 – fourteen years after it had been given those powers by the Framework Agreement between the Legal Services Board and the Ministry of Justice.
I shall submit my report asking for an independent public inquiry,
I respectfully ask that the CLC and Consumer Panel consider the best framework for obtaining an independent review of the Legal Ombudsman. I believe that the framework of the 2005 Inquiry Act provides the ideal basis for reviewing the working of the Legal Services Act 2007 and providing a sound basis for reform.