Law firms and chambers will have to carry out regular staff surveys to monitor the diversity of their workforce from next year, after the Legal Services Board published statutory guidance on the issue this week.

From 2012, the LSB will require regulators including the Solicitors Regulation Authority to ensure that firms collect information on the age, gender, disability, ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation and caring responsibilities of their staff.

Staff will not be obliged to provide the information. Voluntary data will also be collected on socio-economic background.

Firms will be expected to publish anonymised results of all categories except sex­ual orientation and religion or belief.LSB chair David Edmonds said the legal profession needed to be open, which is why the LSB was ‘mandating concrete action, rather than good intentions, to drive progress forward’.

The Bar Standards Board has previously argued that the move would be more effective if data were collected by regulators rather than individual chambers or firms. The SRA welcomed the move.