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 [1] 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 [2], 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.