Bar Council response to the Legal Services Board Regulatory Standards report.

Chantal-Aimée Doerries QC, Chairman of the Bar, said:  "The Legal Services Board's Regulatory Standards Report 2015/16 on the performance of the legal services regulators highlights many examples of the regulatory regime at the Bar which are working well, with clear evidence of progress having being made. 

"From the Bar Council's perspective, there is no evidence in the LSB's report to suggest that the current arrangements for regulating the Bar are insufficiently independent of the Bar Council's representative functions or that those functions have resulted in delaying reform, or hampering the transparency of the cost of regulation or that they have risked confusion in government about the respective roles of the Bar Standards Board and the Bar Council in its representative capacity.

"While it is important not to be complacent, the LSB's findings reflect our experience that the current regulatory framework is working satisfactorily. With that in mind, we will look forward to contributing our views in more detail to any future consultation on legal services regulation that emerges from the Ministry of Justice."