Plans for the Solicitors Regulation Authority to oversee CILEX members are up in the air, the Gazette has learned, as the body currently regulating legal executives celebrated its achievements while highlighting an ‘existential threat’ to its future.
The CILEX board is expected to make a final decision on whether to press ahead with an application to transfer regulatory delegation from CILEx Regulation to the SRA. A spokesperson for CILEX told the Gazette this week: ‘The CILEX board met on 31 October 2024 and is awaiting further guidance from the Legal Services Board. A public statement will be made once next steps have been determined.’
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In a 2025 corporate plan published on Wednesday, CILEx Regulation (CRL) said its 2022-24 strategy had been delivered ‘against a backdrop of continuing uncertainty’ caused by CILEX’s announcement in 2022 of its intention to switch regulators.
‘CILEX’s proposals have required CRL to devote significant time and resource to respond to the existential threat facing our organisation. Despite operating in an extremely uncertain environment much has been achieved to deliver benefits to consumers and the regulated community. The fact that CRL has continued to deliver quality regulation and deliver its strategic objectives is testimony to its leadership and the resilience of its staff,’ the corporate plan added.
Achievements listed in CRL's corporate plan for 2024 include ‘further enhancing the transparency of our own governance arrangements [and] increasing our openness in the way that we do business, through a publication scheme more open than many other regulators including the publication of board papers in advance of meetings’.
The corporate plan states that work this year to meet its strategic objective of ‘standards and public trust’ include completing a ‘lessons learnt review from the LSB’s report into the SRA’s handling of Axiom Ince and SSB’.
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