LONDON (Within The Law) - It’s not been the easiest year for regulators. The SFO and FCA have both faced criticisms, but the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority (SRA) is bucking the trend. In a glowing end of year report from the Legal Services Board, the regulator was found to have passed every test with flying colours. The report found it had met all of its 27 targets.
The board set standards across five areas of evaluation – regulatory approach, authorisation, supervision, enforcement and leadership. The SRA passed with flying colours.
The report comes as welcome news to the SRA after a somewhat less favourable result last year. In November 2019 the regulator was found to have provided insufficient transparency about how the board makes its decision and given a number of issues as requiring improvement.
This, said the LSB, was rectified as quickly as March when the SRA published board papers with fewer redactions and more information about its processes. The regulator has also provided more details bout how its board holds the executive to account.
The organisation, then, as improved dramatically in transparency. This has been a bone of contention after the SRA banned the public and media from board meetings and instead published board papers after meetings together with a blog from its chair.
Despite satisfying the LSB’s requirements on transparency, neither the papers nor any blog has to date been published since the last meeting on 8 December.
The LSB also said that the SRA has improved how it upholds standards of advocacy by providing a detailed plan and timetable for assessing the quality of solicitor advocates’ work.
The general picture was also more promising. Of the other seven bodies assessed, only the Council for Licensed Conveyancers managed the same thing. In total the LSB found 13 outcomes across all regulators studied which had not been met. However, in general, standards have improved significantly over 2019.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)