The Law Society will have to bear more than 90% of the initial set-up and running costs of the Legal Services Board and Office for Legal Complaints under plans published last week.

Proposals for a levy to raise £15.1m for the new bodies appear in a 34-page consultation document, The Levy: funding legal services regulation, published by the LSB. Of the eight approved regulators to be levied, the Law Society would be liable for the lion’s share, £13.7m, or nearly 91%.

The document says ‘effective regulation must be properly resourced’ with costs being met ‘by the professions through the practice fees levied by the approved regulators’.

The £15.1m cost breaks down as £10.6m for the OLC and £4.5m for the LSB.

In apportioning costs for the LSB, the paper proposes a ‘per capita’ formula based on the number of members of a profession who hold a practising certificate or are registered with an approved regulator to carry out reserved legal activities.

OLC costs are based on the number of complaints that the approved regulators receive over a rolling three-year period. Bodies that generate less than 0.1% of the total number of complaints will not be charged, leaving the Law Society, Bar Council and Council for Licensed Conveyancers to foot the bill, with 95.2% being paid by the Society.

Launching the consultation, David Edmonds, the LSB’s chair, said: ‘Parliament, in passing the Legal Services Act, was very clear that the costs of legal services regulation should be borne by the sector in accordance with fair principles.’

Consultation on the levy closes on 2 July.

The Law Society said: ‘We will respond in detail to the consultation in due course. It was obvious the lion’s share would come from the Law Society. There remain questions in the phasing arrangements of payment. We will pay attention to that area of the proposals.’