The Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) has published its 2024-27 strategy for the Legal Ombudsman (LeO), together with the business plan and budget for 2024/25.
The OLC’s strategy sets out its vision that LeO is a leading and trusted Ombudsman scheme, where every complaint helps drive better legal services.
This reflects the OLC’s ambition to build LeO’s impact in the legal services sector, by sharing more of its unique insight and constructive feedback on how to prevent legal service complaints arising and improve complaints handling.
At the same time, it will ensure LeO continues to improve the experience of consumers and legal service providers relying on it for a fair outcome to their complaint at the earliest possible stage.
In the first strategy year, 2024/25, LeO will:
OLC Chair Elisabeth Davies said:
“We rely on legal services at key times in our lives – whether it’s buying a home, dealing with bereavement, having issues at work, ending a marriage, or being involved in legal action. It’s because they matter so much that an effective Legal Ombudsman matters. If something goes wrong, consumers and legal providers should have confidence it can be resolved fairly and as quickly as possible.
Over recent years LeO has worked hard to build that confidence. Users and providers of legal services are having a substantially better experience when they’re relying on LeO’s help to move forward. This progress speaks to the hard work and commitment of everyone at LeO. It means that, as we look ahead to the new strategy period, we have firm foundations for the future.
While recognising the substantial improvements LeO has already made, we’ve been clear that there’s no room for complacency. By the end of the strategy period, we want to say with confidence that LeO is delivering an excellent experience for those relying on it.”
Chief Ombudsman Paul McFadden said:
“We’re ambitious about establishing LeO as a constructive and strategic voice for improvement. It’s an ambition rooted in the idea that complaints don’t only matter individually – but taken together, create a bigger picture of what’s happening in legal services, what’s going wrong, and what needs to change so that people get the service they’re relying on at critical times in their lives.
Our ability to deliver relevant, impactful learning and insight depends on our providing a timely, effective and efficient service. Our budget reflects our aim to strike a balance between continuing to improve customers’ experience and absorbing demand to minimise costs.
Equally, we can’t deliver a timely, effective and efficient service if we don’t feed back what we’re seeing, helping legal service providers and consumers prevent complaints at source. In this first year, we’re making a small but significant increase in our learning and insight capacity – essential for us to do the groundwork required to deliver more over the course of the strategy.”
Notes
About the Legal Ombudsman
The Legal Services Act 2007 (the Act) established the Legal Ombudsman scheme (LeO) and the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) to administer it. The Act also established the Legal Services Board (LSB) to oversee the regulation of the legal profession in England and Wales. Both the OLC and the LSB are Arm’s Length Bodies of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). LeO’s work supports and aligns with the regulatory objectives.
LeO has two core roles. It resolves complaints about providers of legal services that haven’t been resolved to customers’ satisfaction – as quickly and informally as possible. LeO covers the majority of legal services provided in England and Wales. The rules and limits about what complaints LeO can help with are set out on LeO’s website.
The second vital part of LeO’s work is sharing learning and insight from the complaints it sees. This promotes better complaint handling, prevents future complaints and helps drive higher standards in legal services.
About the strategy and business plan
The Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) reached the end of its 2020-23 strategy period in March 2023. Having put in place an interim strategy until the end of March 2024, it has now consulted on and published a new strategy for the Legal Ombudsman (LeO), which will run from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2027. The OLC has also consulted on and published its Business Plan and Budget for 2024/25 – the first year of the new strategy.
Before and alongside the formal public consultation period, the OLC and LeO have engaged with a wide range of people and organisations with an interest in LeO’s work – including LeO’s staff, the Legal Services Board, the Legal Services Consumer Panel, the approved regulators, professional bodies, legal service providers and representatives of the consumer advice sector.
