It is a year and a day since the Gazette reported that CILEX was entering the ‘final stages’ of its plan to hand the Solicitors Regulation Authority control of its members. Legal executives wouldn’t know for certain until Christmas, we reckoned – though it was shrewd of our reporter not to specify which Christmas.
Fast forward six months, to January 2025, and CILEX was poised to ‘make a final decision’ on whether to make a formal application to the solicitors watchdog and ditch CILEx Regulation. ‘Further guidance’ was awaited from the Legal Services Board and a public statement would follow, we were assured.
Since then, the trail has rather gone cold. The application still hasn’t been made. ‘CILEX and its board remain committed to its “Case for Change” in relation to the regulation of its members,’ a CILEX spokesperson told me this week. ‘A public statement will be made once next steps in the redelegation process have been confirmed by the Legal Services Board.’
Why hasn’t the application been made? We don’t know. CILEX isn’t saying.
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This timeline – now verging on the absurd – reflects badly on the regulatory superstructure created by the Legal Services Act 2007. It is now three years almost to the day since CILEX broke cover on the plan, prompting CILEx Regulation to declare the transfer ‘illegal’ and threaten to sue the representative body. We’ve had four prime ministers and a new monarch since July 2022.
Perhaps it is not coincidental that the dramatis personae in this saga are now – or are about to be – very different. Both the SRA and CILEX will soon have new chief executives. The LSB has had three CEOs – two permanent, one interim – since the plan was hatched.
It remains the case, too, that council members of the Law Society – which opposes the transfer – would need to approve the necessary rule changes allowing the SRA to take CILEX members into its fold. That still looks like a high hurdle among many yet to be cleared.
The SRA has hardly burnished its empire-building credentials in recent months, either. Even at this late stage it would surely be politic for the Cube to withdraw gracefully, follow Chancery Lane’s advice and concentrate on the day job.
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