The Legal Services Board (LSB) has launched a consultation on its draft 2015-18 strategic plan and draft 2015/16 business plan.

The LSB is proposing to structure its work around the twin objectives of:

• breaking down regulatory barriers to competition, growth and innovation; and
• enabling need for legal services to be met more effectively.

whilst continuing its programme of work to drive up regulatory performance, evaluate the market and make statutory decisions, including decisions on regulators’ requests to change their regulatory arrangements. Underpinning the plans is a research programme designed to keep the LSB in touch with the real-world challenges faced by regulators, consumers and legal professionals.

Legal Services Board Chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, said:

“Legal services are a vital part of the economy. In the last year, the sector grew to an annual turnover of just over £29bn, up 15 per cent in six years. They bring inward investment and new jobs beyond the boundaries of the sector itself. They are also a critical part of the structure of our civil society, delivering wider public interest objectives such as the rule of law. But it is a sector undergoing profound change in terms of consumer requirements, market developments and government policy.

This exceptional growth and these significant changes present opportunities. The LSB intends to respond by freeing up legal practitioners to adapt, grow and innovate. Our goal is to ensure that citizens’ legal needs are met as effectively as possible whilst, at the same time, efficiently discharging our on-going statutory responsibilities.

Our work will take into account the role played by both regulated and unregulated legal service providers, since this is the reality of the market in which consumers make choices and in which practitioners compete. We also plan to collaborate with the widest possible range of consumer and legal services bodies, and to share knowledge with regulators in other sectors of the economy.

This consultation represents an opportunity for legal practitioners, their representative bodies, third party organisations and anyone with an interest in legal services to help shape the vital work we are doing to modernise legal services.”

Further information about the consultation entitled “Strategic Plan 2015–18 and Business Plan 2015/16” and which closes on 20 February 2015 can be found on the LSB web site