Relationships matter. And as an organisation that works alongside so many others within the legal sector, we know how important it is to build confidence in the Legal Ombudsman's (LeO) ability to deliver for the users and providers of legal services who rely on our help.
As part of our improvement journey, we’ve been committed to being honest and transparent. We’ve been providing regular updates against our trajectories and wider performance indicators, we’ve established working groups to offer challenge and advice on the plans we’ve put forward to improve operational processes, and we’re engaging with the users of our service in different ways, including through the establishment of a dedicated Service Provider Forum and engaging with national consumer representative groups.
Raising awareness of changes to our Scheme Rules
The focus of our engagement over the last two quarters has been around the changes we are making to our Scheme Rules and on our draft Business Plan, Budget and Interim Strategy for 2023/24.
Our Scheme Rules are changing on 1 April 2023 and represent the biggest suite of changes we have made to them since 2012. You can read about the changes we are making and why we are making them here. Communicating these changes has been a real focus in the lead up to the changes going live and we have been in regular contact with the profession and with consumers to help them understand what our changes mean for them.
As well as publishing detailed guidance and FAQs we have published articles in legal sector magazines and online platforms, and attended forums including the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s COLP/COFA conference, LegalEx, the Society of Licensed Conveyancer’s annual conference, and local law society events. A series of bite-size webinars have been running in March.
Seeking views on our plans for 2023/24
During November and December 2022, we consulted on the OLC’s Business Plan, Budget and Interim Strategy for 2023/24. The consultation set out our ambitions for the coming year, including an explicit focus on the early resolution of complaints and a renewed emphasis on customers’ experience and proportionality. A focused one-year interim strategy reflects the OLC’s ongoing commitment to transparency, getting LeO to a point of stability, and monitoring the impacts of the changes to our Scheme Rules – pending a full strategic refresh from 2024/25.
Overall stakeholders have been supportive of the priorities and objectives outlined in the draft plans. We are pleased that stakeholder confidence has increased or remained the same, reflecting LeO’s increased transparency and communication. The Legal Services Board (LSB) has now approved our final Business Plan and Budget.
Seeing LeO’s people in action
We’ve also hosted four visits to our Birmingham office: from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the LSB, the Law Society, and a visit from the new Head of the Arm’s Length Body (ALB) Centre of Expertise. The MoJ and LSB both feature in the OLC’s Tripartite protocol, the governance framework that determines what we’re allowed to do; and it’s the LSB who have the final say on the OLC’s Budget and Business Plan for LeO each year.
The relationships we have with these organisations are all different, but they all matter. We want to ensure that at their core there’s a shared confidence in LeO’s ability to deliver a service that customers both want and deserve.
(Photo: Paul McFadden, Elisabeth Davies and LeO colleagues with Law Society President Lubna Shuja and Regulatory Policy Associate Anjali Mouelhi)
While the MoJ and LSB regularly see data about LeO’s performance improvement, each visit provided an opportunity to go beyond the numbers – enabling us to demonstrate the improvements we’ve made through enabling our visitors to talk to the people who’ve made them happen.
(Photo: Paul McFadden, Elisabeth Davies and LeO colleagues Legal Service Board colleagues)
As we move into 2023/24, and the OLC develops its new longer-term strategy, we look forward to more opportunities to engage and strengthen relationships with those with an interest in what we do. We’ll share how that’s going in future editions of LeO News.
