Balancing the story

Several points arise from your report of the Legal Services Commission's equal opportunities report (see [2002] Gazette, 25 April, 3).

The headline asserts: 'ethnic minority firms more likely to receive non-compliance warnings from LSC'.

This is misleading.

Our report clearly says that no significant difference was found in the likelihood of minority ethnic firms and other firms receiving any operational non-compliances (ONCs).

Hence an important research conclusion was that minority ethnic firms were no more or less likely than other firms to pass or fail at audit.

However, minority ethnic firms were likely to receive a greater number of ONCs, if they received any.

The research went on to find a correlation for all firms between the finding of non-compliances and the shortness of time during which the firm had been in the franchising process.

As more minority ethnic firms than others came late into the process, this may contribute to the difference in ONC numbers.

You state that the survey's response rate was 17%, down from the previous year's 60%.

However, the recent survey was of a different population of firms and dealt with different matters.

The response rates cannot be compared.

You assert that the report simply relates the findings of a survey apparently of 39 minority ethnic firms and 64 others.

In fact, the report considers three distinct research exercises, the central one of which dealt with a statistical analysis of 1,987 firms' audit results in the year April 2001 to April 2002.

The responses from the survey (sent to 518 firms) were presented to put into context wider findings of this and last year's reports.

Pascoe Pleasence, head of Legal Services Research Centre, Legal Services Commission