The eight frontline legal services regulators should be replaced by a single independent regulator as part of reforms proposed today to consolidate courts, tribunals, ombudsmen and regulators. 

Resolving disputes: a framework for holistic reform, by legal regulation expert Professor Christopher Hodges, emeritus professor of justice systems at the University of Oxford, argues that the current system is too complex and fragmented.

The report, for social wellbeing charity the Nuffield Foundation, recommends bringing the courts, tribunals, ombudsmen, regulators and advice services into one system. 

Hodges writes that it is confusing for citizens to navigate, does not deliver justice often enough and too often responds to problems after they have escalated, rather than helping prevent them in the first place. He recommends creating a new national Justice Institute to oversee the design, management and reform of the system.

Hodges also suggests establishing simpler pathways for resolving disputes – for example, combining ACAS and employment tribunals.

Access to civil justice should be through a ‘single, uncomplicated portal, readily identifiable to users’, the paper says.

Hodges writes that anyone encountering everyday legal problems relating to housing, employment, family relationships, debt, consumer purchases and public services finds themselves faced with multiple, sometimes competing, organisations offering support and redress. 

The justice system has been designed in fragments,' Hodges said. 'Courts, tribunals, ombudsmen, regulators and advice services have all developed separately, leaving people to struggle through a confusing landscape when they need help and redress after something has gone wrong. My report argues for a fundamentally different approach – the creation of a single, coherent system that helps people solve problems, secure redress and reduce future harm, not by simply improving existing institutions, but by connecting them into a single, effective system that actually works.’

Rob Street, director of justice at the Nuffield Foundation, said: ‘What makes this review distinctive is the scale of its ambition. Rather than proposing another round of specific reforms, Professor Hodges asks what a system for resolving disputes is for, and what would it look like if it were designed around people’s needs, rather than institutions.

‘The result is a major challenge to longstanding assumptions about how best justice should be delivered.’