Shamit Saggar and Kevin Martin applaud the work of the Law Society's Consumer Complaints Service and call for more achievable targets

The Law Society's Consumer Complaints Service (CCS) has been working hard to agree with the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner's (LSCC) complaints-handling targets for 2006/07. Considerable progress has been made in recent weeks towards meeting the LSCC's requirements, and both sides have agreed to try to finalise a plan as soon as possible. So it is difficult to understand why the LSCC has imposed a penalty at this stage (see [2006] Gazette, 25 May, 1).


The CCS has made steady, significant performance improvements in recent years, as the Lord Chancellor recognised last week. The plan submitted by the Consumer Complaints Board (CCB) to the LSCC for approval in March built on that progress, and contained substantial further improvements that would have been sustainable over the longer term. It is especially galling because the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is being held up by the government and LSCC as a good model for the future office for legal complaints, and yet the CCS's performance is better. In 2005, the CCS closed 54% of cases within three months, 75% within six months and 85% in nine months, compared with the FOS achieving 32%, 64% and 80% against the same targets.


The targets that the LSCC requires are unachievable. The LSCC wants all cases in 2006-07 to be closed within 15 months of receipt. This is unrealistic in a small number of cases because third parties, solicitors, or the customers themselves do not respond to enquiries sufficiently promptly. Some require regulatory action that cannot be dealt with in that time. To reflect this, we have suggested a target of 98.3% of cases to be closed within 15 months or less.


The LSCC will soon announce her view of the CCS's performance last year, when the Law Society reluctantly agreed to very demanding and, some might say, unrealistic targets, and there is the possibility of a further fine.


The LSCC's actions on this year's plan, and in judging our performance last year, mask the story of continued improvements in our service to consumers in the past three years. The number of complaints in progress has fallen significantly. In January 2003, there were 7,155 complaints; by May 2006, it was down to 5,926.


The CCS is also meeting consumers' expectations by dealing with complaints more quickly. Complaints closed within three months rose from 48% in January 2003 to 57% in January 2006; those closed within six months rose from 71% to 81% over this period; within a year climbed from 91% to 94%; and within 18 months rose from 96% to 97%.


This means that, while in 2003 we closed an average of 1,346 cases a month, in 2005 we averaged 1,565 a month, a 16% increase. Improvements in turnaround times and productivity have not been at the expense of quality. In fact, the Legal Services Ombudsman's satisfaction rates increased from 57% in 2003 to 67% in 2005.


And the helpline service is operating at levels much better than industry norms, with a call abandonment rate of just 1% in 2005, when 86% of calls were answered within 20 seconds compared with 77% on 2003.


The achievement of the CCS over the past three years is substantial and sustainable. The CCS is determined to build on this and deliver continuing improvement on our service to consumers and solicitors. The CCB will continue to engage at every level with the LSCC to arrive at an agreed and workable plan.


The practical differences are sufficiently small to make this a realistic outcome, but it will require the LSCC to take a broad view of the practical implications of targets.


Shamit Saggar is chairman of the Law Society's Consumer Complaints Board and Kevin Martin is the Society's president