The first alternative business structures should open for business in 2011, the chief executive of the Legal Services Board predicted last week.

Chris Kenny told the Association of Law Costs Draftsmen’s annual conference in Harrogate that the recession would encourage new ventures.

On the question of creating the necessary new licensing scheme for ABSs, Kenny said: ‘Our intention is to move as quickly as we can, consistent with ensuring the safeguards are there for the public. In the past people have spoken about the first ABS firms being approved the back-end of 2012 or 2013. We would hope to be able to move significantly more quickly than that. If we’re as late as 2012, I would be really quite disappointed.’

Kenny said ‘an awful lot’ of thinking needs to be done over the detail of governance and standards, but argued that the need for action over ABSs is greater in the current climate.

‘It is precisely [during] the recession that you attempt to open up new opportunities,’ he said. ‘It is important, subject to the right protections being there, that you remove restrictions to see what can work, to give people new ways of growing their business.’