Today the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) opens the consultation on its 2023/24 Business Plan and Budget for the Legal Ombudsman (LeO), together with an interim strategy that will take us to the end of March 2024.
The OLC last consulted on its strategy in November 2019. While Covid-19 was on the horizon, it was not clear then how fundamentally the pandemic would change daily life and, for many organisations, require a wholesale shift in ways of working.
For the Legal Ombudsman, the disruption of the pandemic exacerbated existing performance challenges. Steps had been taken to modernise the scheme, but the reality was that far too many people were already waiting far too long for an answer.
At the end of the strategy period, the OLC is in no doubt about the genuine progress LeO has made in recovering its performance – and in turn, the genuine difference this has made to customer experience and stakeholders’ confidence. The impact of the action LeO has taken is already being felt by users and providers of legal services. With strong oversight from the OLC, and having invited feedback and challenge from its stakeholders, LeO’s journey to date has been one of complete accountability and transparency. This has in itself been welcomed by stakeholders, building trust in LeO and its leadership team.
While the end is in sight, however, the task ahead remains significant. While the initial Covid-19 impact is behind us, uncertainty is an ongoing feature of the post-pandemic environment. And through this uncertainty, the OLC and LeO must maintain a laser-like focus on getting LeO to a level of performance that is both acceptable to its customers and sustainable in the long run.
Many initiatives with a strategic impact are also in train: from upcoming changes to LeO’s Scheme Rules and work to increase the transparency of its decisions, to its critical People Strategy and action plan for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
For these reasons, the OLC is today setting out a tightly-focused, one-year interim strategy. These do not change the OLC’s Strategic Objectives, but instead look to refocus them for LeO’s final recovery year.
Our consultation sets out these sharpened overarching aims. In LeO’s updated mission is an explicit focus on the early resolution of complaints – and in its objectives, a renewed emphasis on customers’ experience and proportionality. The strategy also reflects the OLC’s ongoing commitment to transparency and collaboration.
The current economic context is undoubtedly difficult for all organisations. The OLC’s draft budget aims to strike a difficult balance – on the one hand, trying to minimise our cost to legal services providers, while ensuring LeO completes its recovery journey. And on the other, recognising the extraordinary inflationary pressures we all face, and the very real need to acknowledge the impact on LeO’s people of the rising cost of living.
As LeO delivers its plans this year and into the next, it is right that we start to lay the groundwork for an ambitious and comprehensive future strategy, which we will consult on later in 2023.
There are many questions we will need to ask. For example, how can LeO ensure that it is both agile and efficient? What will LeO’s customers expect from LeO five or ten years from now? How can LeO differentiate itself as an employer? What are the consequences of more early resolution? What should be the scale of LeO’s ambition for its wider impact? And what standards of good corporate governance should the OLC be held to?
As always, the OLC is grateful for every perspective shared with us as we work to deliver our ambition: a trusted and thriving LeO that supports a trusted and thriving legal sector.
Elisabeth Davies
Chair of the Office for Legal Complaints
