The Legal Services Board is over-reaching its role as an oversight regulator and should rethink its ‘wrong-headed’ business plan, the bar has said in a robust consultation response.

The Bar Council said it was clear from the tenor, presentation and detailed content of LSB materials, including the LSB’s draft 2023/24 business plan consultation, ‘that the LSB regards its remit as wider than it is’.

Setting out why the ‘whole emphasis and much of the content of the business plan is wrong-headed’, the Bar Council said the LSB had no role in setting strategy or policy for legal services such as ‘lowering unmet legal need across large parts of society’ or ‘reforming the justice system’.

‘Desirable though these may be, these are social and political aims relevant to politicians, parliament and representative bodies, such as the Bar Council, not regulators or, still less, an oversight regulator,’ the Bar Council said.

The Bar Council called for an end to financing or using the ‘public panel’, which the LSB established in 2020/21 to engage more directly with members of the public. The public panel ‘plainly duplicates’ the Legal Services Consumer Panel which, the Bar Council pointed out, has eight lay members whose appointments were approved by the lord chancellor and is an independent arm of the LSB.

Explaining its strong views, the representative body said it was important the oversight regulator understands that finances for its business plan come by way of a levy on regulated individuals and, ultimately, consumers of regulated legal services. ‘It is not, therefore, appropriate for the LSB to spend (in substantial part without real accountability) consumers' money on matters for which parliament has not deemed it has a role,’ the council said.

The Bar Council was encouraged to see that the LSB had not proposed to increase its budget above the rate of inflation. However, ‘increasing its budget to fund activities which are “nice-to-haves” rather than essential to the LSB fulfilling its statutory duties will put further pressure on practitioners, in particular those who are junior and publicly funded’.

This is not the first time the LSB has been accused of overreaching by the bar, which has asked the Ministry of Justice to review the oversight regulator.