The Solicitors Regulation Authority must focus more on performance and legal services consumers than on the theory of policy, an assessment by the Legal Services Board has found.

The super-regulator said the SRA had achieved much since it was formed in 2007, but had yet to fully meet its own set standards. It is particularly critical of the SRA’s assurance that enforcement ‘is well established and effective’.

In a report published today on the SRA’s self assessment of its performance, LSB chairman David Edmonds (pictured) said the SRA should be ‘proud’ of the progress made so far, but more needs to be done.

‘Our conclusion – which we will be discussing with the SRA – is that it needs to focus its efforts not only on the development of policy and procedures, but also, and rather more sharply, on performance and the opportunities and risks in the market place,’ he said.

‘The SRA has done more than the other regulators to meet the challenges set by the introduction of the Legal Services Act.

‘We believe the SRA has gathered the building blocks to create a legal services regulatory framework that has the potential to meet the standards required, but there is a lot of construction to do.’

The report criticises ‘significant delays’ in the authorisation of alternative business structures, with IT delays having a negative effect on risk identification and supervision.

On outcomes-focused regulation, the LSB report says the new handbook continues to include a large number of rules ‘without clear evidence to justify the restrictions they impose and thus their retention’. It adds that some outcomes and rules were ‘unhelpfully elaborated in detail’.

The report says anecdotal evidence suggested a pattern of prosecution for trivial infringements, when early intervention would have been more proportionate.

It says the SRA’s verdict on its enforcement activity is the ‘weakest of the self-assessment. This is because it did not contain the levels of self-reflection and detail present in the other sections. Much of the evidence provided was simply links to documents on the SRA’s website.

‘These documents, although relevant, did not provide evidence as to how the SRA is assuring itself that it is delivering the required indicators and delivering an effective enforcement process. A number of statements did not have evidence to support them. It is also not clear how the enforcement work links with the other sections of the SRA and whether those links are effective.’

In a response, the SRA stated that 2013 will be a time for embedding new approaches and improving delivery after significant reform last year.

SRA chair Charles Plant added: ‘We disagree with some of the detailed conclusions reached by the LSB in its report, particularly in relation to our enforcement activity.

‘We will be discussing these with the LSB, and our concern that the LSB's approach is sometimes too narrowly focused on certain regulatory objectives without proper regard for the wider picture, or to the respective roles of the LSB and the frontline regulators.’