The Legal Services Board’s new consumer panel will examine referral fees as the very first item on its agenda when it meets for the first time later this month, the Gazette has learned.

The news comes after the Law Society’s council last week voted overwhelmingly in favour of lobbying the government and LSB to ban referral fees for all providers of legal services, in a reversal of its previous policy position.

The LSB’s consumer panel, to be launched this week, will ad vise the LSB on the interests of consumers of legal services. It will be chaired by Dr Dianne Hayter, former chair of the Bar Standards Board’s consumer panel.

An LSB spokesman said that the LSB will work with the legal regulators ‘to find proportionate remedies to any identified risks’ after it has taken advice from the consumer panel.

He said: ‘Our business plan makes clear that we are sympathetic in principle to the views of some stakeholders, including the Law Society, that there is a need for a consistent regulatory approach across the sector as regards referral fees. This is why it will be the first issue that we will ask the Legal Services Board consumer panel to advise us on.’

Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson said: ‘We hope that the LSB and its consumer panel look at this matter seriously.’

Last week the Law Society’s council adopted a motion put forward by council member Sue Carter to alter council’s existing policy on referral fees so that the Law Society will ‘make representations to government and the Legal Services Board that referral fees do not have a place in markets for legal services’, and should be banned.

However, the Law Society’s council does not have the power to change the rules on referral fees, which as a regulatory matter must be dealt with by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.