Last week Council reluctantly recommended an increase to the practising certificate fee for 2009/10 to £1,180 to fund the work of the SRA, LCS, Law Society, SDT, Legal Services Board and Office for Legal Complaints.

We understand that the profession is being hit hard by the economic climate and that is why we took every possible step available to us to minimise the PC fee increase while continuing with our programme of support for solicitors. The Law Society has had to contend with significant new costs over which it has almost no control. These relate mainly to the cost of establishing the LSB and the OLC, both of which were introduced by the Legal Services Act.

The solicitors' profession is the largest component of the legal sector, meaning that we have to shoulder by far the largest burden, even as the number of practising solicitors is falling.

I have made it plain that not one penny of the increase is attributable to any increase in spending (2010 vs 2009) by the Law Society. To keep the PC fee as low as possible, the Society has frozen its budget for 2010 at the 2009 level, following a 5% cut in 2009. We are providing a better service to our members than ever before for less than the price of a quality daily newspaper.

The main challenge for the Law Society in the current climate is to help its members cope with the current economic circumstances and to thrive on the other side of the recession.

The Society has achieved a great deal over the last 12 months. We have been in discussions with the retail banks to foster understanding with them at the highest levels about the nature of legal businesses and how and why they differ from other SMEs. Recently the Society and Lloyds TSB jointly ran a series of free interactive workshops around the country on how to get the best from your bank during the downturn. We have also had a great deal of success in promoting measures to alleviate pressure on the cash flow of legal aid firms, including the resolution of discrepancies over VAT on disbursements, and we are pushing the Legal Services Commission hard to introduce further measures to improve cashflow. We are also working with HM Revenue & Customs to try to get work in progress excluded from tax calculations.

The Society has also had marked success in its negotiations with HMRC to arrange tax deferral arrangements for those firms suffering difficulties in the downturn. We are leading the debate on the big issues affecting the profession, including the impact of the Legal Services Act, collective redress and the role of regulation in the business of law. We aim to shape the future environment for legal services in a way that supports a flourishing and innovative sector, not one that is bound by the red tape of disproportionate regulation. That's why we commissioned Lord Hunt to look at the future of regulation in the round and Nick Smedley to investigate how firms focussing on corporate work could be more effectively regulated.

Major projects this year include our homebuying review to make sure that conveyancing solicitors around the country are at the heart of the homebuying process. We have also begun a far-reaching review of publicly funded legal work with a view to setting out practical proposals for future access to justice. Meanwhile, legal aid practitioners are feeling the full weight of our support regarding best value tendering as we continue to lobby for BVT to be scrapped following the very substantial concessions we have already extracted from the LSC.

In immediate, practical terms we know that more and more practitioners are relying on our practice notes, developed by specialist committees of solicitors to provide advice on matters ranging from anti-money laundering to lasting powers of attorney.

We have invited the SRA, the LCS and SDT to adopt our approach to spending in 2010. We will work with these same colleagues to reduce our total costs. We will have to provide our services to solicitors and the public more efficiently.

There is much more to do. We are determined to provide members with the support needed, and to ensure that the profession’s value to society is properly recognised and respected. The Council is committed to doing all it can to ensure that the costs imposed on members are not increased in future years as we seek to build a Law Society which is worthy of the profession we serve.

Des Hudson is chief executive of the Law Society