The legal ombudsman service was still struggling to keep hold of staff months into its renewal plan, it emerged this week.

Writing to the Legal Services Board in July, Elisabeth Davies, the chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, said annual attrition rates were still at 24.9% in June. The figure was higher than six months previously and was despite the 2022/23 business plan explicitly stating that reducing attrition across the business was a ‘key priority’ this year.

The loss of staff has had a knock-on effect in recent years on the number of cases being concluded, which has added to the backlog of unopened cases that reached 5,677 last year.

Davies said attrition rate ‘continues to be a challenge and a key business priority’, but offered assurances that an external pay benchmarking exercise was underway and will form part of wider review of the reward and recognition strategy.

The ombudsman said earlier this year that recruitment drive run towards the end of 2021 attracted 900 applicants, of which 40 new starters were selected. The extra numbers were beyond what was initially required, to take account of any staff leaving over the coming months.

The ombudsman service has also reported difficulty replacing chief operating officer Sandra Strinati, who left the role in July. Plans to recruit a new COO only received approval from the Ministry of Justice on 27 June, and Davies admitted this delay has likely pushed back any appointment into the new year.

The first round of localised recruitment for the service’s Cardiff hub is complete with 13 investigators appointed and already in post from June. The potential for a second hub in Leeds is being looked into.

Reflecting at the end of the first quarter of this year, Davies said LeO closed 788 cases in June against a target of 825, although the number of unopened cases has been brought down to 5,154. Total closures for the first quarter were 2,313 against a business plan assumption of 2,385.

A new front-end team has achieved 447 early resolution closures – exceeding its target by 65%.

 

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