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Legal Services Ombudsman and Legal Services Complaints Commissioner

The Legal Services Act 2007 establishes a new regime for handling complaints about the provision of legal services with the creation of the Legal Services Board (LSB) and the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). The LSB will be an over-arching regulator and the OLC will deal with all complaints about regulated legal service providers. The OLC will be a new organisation that is completely independent of the legal profession. Therefore, once the OLC becomes fully operational, the professional bodies own arrangements for handling complaints will cease and the government bodies with oversight of these—the Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman (OLSO) and the Office of the Legal Services Complaints Commissioner (OLSCC)—will no longer be required. Based on current planning assumptions, the LSB will become fully operational early 2010 and the OLC will become fully operational in late 2010. Therefore, in line with the current timetable, the OLSCC will close in March 2010 and the OLSO will close no earlier than December 2010. Both offices have provided a very valuable service to consumers and I am sure they will continue to do so until the new arrangements become operational.