LeO aims to do more for less

The Legal Ombudsman is aiming to handle more complaints at a lower cost per case, its three-year strategy and budget reveals.

LeO expects the total number of complaints it handles to increase from 7,630 in the last financial year to 8,100 this year. Costs per case are expected to fall from £2,168 to £1,938.

Rule changes introduced in February last year increased the amount of time clients could complain about their solicitors from one year to six years, and LeO's maximum compensation award from £30,000 to £50,000.

LeO believed this would increase the number of complaints it handled by 10 per cent to 8,500.

However, in the strategy and budget, LeO said case volumes had been "stable rather than increasing as we planned for the beginning of the current financial year".

LeO has reduced its planned budget for this year from £17m to £15.7m, and cut 44 jobs through a reorganisation in the summer. It aims to reduce its cost per case to £1,750 next year.

Meanwhile, before the end of 2014, the Legal Ombudsman is due to expand its jurisdiction to complaints about case management companies (CMCs).

In their introduction to the three-year strategy, chief ombudsman Adam Sampson and former chair of the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) Elizabeth France said that "planning assumptions and targets for this work" should be produced and measured separately.

"There must be no confusion. In addition, our delivery of current work must not be, or be perceived to be, adversely impacted by the extension of the remit of our service. Indeed, we expect that in the medium-term the service we offer to our existing customers will be enhanced."

Sampson and France said: "The increasingly complex nature of some of the organisations providing legal services challenges the edges of the existing system of regulation of legal services.

"With current ministerial policy not in favour of extending the ambit of regulation, a significant proportion of legal service provision will remain beyond the statutory jurisdiction of the Ombudsman scheme.

"Moreover, there are signs that a range of professionals outside the traditional legal structures are becoming interested in providing legal services as part of a bundled professional services offer.

"One of the accountancy regulators is investigating the possibility of regulating legal activity. Insurance companies are buying up law firms. These changes confuse an already confused consumer market and expose the gaps and overlaps in regulation and redress provision."

Stephen Green, a former police chief constable and member of the LSB, took over the job of chairman of the OLC yesterday.