The head of the Solicitors Regulation Authority is to continue to bulk up her executive team with the search beginning for four new recruits.
The newly-created posts will cover risk, data and insight, external affairs and communications, general counsel and supervision. This will double the executive team working under chief executive Sarah Rapson, who joined the organisation in November.
Rapson had identified as one of her key priorities addressing the shortage of people in governance positions which had contributed to slow handling of casework and uneven delivery.
The new structure of eight executives working on different aspects of the organisation follows a period of consultation with the profession and a review of the leadership model.
Rapson said the expanded top team will bring experience, expertise and capacity into the SRA, as it looks to tackle broader sectoral challenges and seeks to rebuild trust. She added: 'I have been clear that the organisation must change if we are to become the regulator that the public and the sector deserves. We have a lot of work ahead of us to become a modern, proportionate regulator that is both trusted and effective.
‘Establishing a simplified leadership structure and culture of empowerment will be crucial to achieving the scale of transformation needed. The changes we are making will provide greater capacity, renewed focus and more clarity, which in turn will improve the speed and quality of decision making across the organisation.'
One position that has been filled is the executive director of investigations, enforcement and litigation. Former Baker McKenzie partner Jonathan Peddie joined on an interim basis last September and will now lead in an area of the organisation that has been a source of criticism for acting disproportionately or, in other cases, too slowly. Peddie has already been at the forefront of the SRA’s response to the PM Law closure, which is now being treated as a potential fraud.
Peddie will now lead an end-to-end review of the casework process, including reviewing the application of the assessment threshold test, and improving quality assurance of triage and investigations.
He said: ‘When I joined the SRA on an interim basis, my priority was to make sure that the public could continue to have full confidence in the profession. The past six months have reinforced for me the critical importance of a strong, agile and proportionate investigations and enforcement function as a foundation of trust and confidence for the public and solicitors.’
Peddie began his career at the criminal bar prosecuting and defending serious crime and professional discipline matters, and spent a decade at Clifford Chance LLP specialising in business crime, regulatory investigations and complex commercial litigation. He moved to Barclays Bank in 2005 before returning to private practice 10 years later with Baker McKenzie, focusing on investigations and regulatory enforcement and serving as chair of the firm’s global financial institutions industry group. He sits on the FCA’s regulatory decisions committee and is a published author on investigations and financial crime.
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