Activities
The Law Society delegated regulatory powers to the SRA and charged it to exercise those functions independently and in the public interest. This was done following a report by Sir David Clementi of all legal services in England and Wales, which recommended that professional bodies holding both regulatory and representative responsibilities should separate those roles. (see Report of the Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales).
Those functions include, but are not limited to: setting down minimum academic and behavioural standards for entry into the profession and ensuring continued compliance with these standards.; the issue of yearly Practising Certificates; the investigation of allegations of a failure to meet the set behavioural standards, and breaches of the Code of Conduct and other rules; intervention into a solicitor's firm in the public interest. From April 2013 the SRA will be responsible for overseeing compliance with the personal injury referral fee ban implemented as part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) which incorporates the recommendations arising from Lord Justice Jackson’s review of civil costs.
The SRA is headed by Antony Townsend (Chief Executive), who reports to the SRA Board chaired by Charles Plant.
For the first time, from January 2013, the SRA will have a lay majority and becomes the last legal regulatory to do so. This makes it compliant with internal governance rules laid down by the Legal Services Board. From 1 January 2013, the board will comprise: Charles Plant (chairman), Graham Chisnall, Martin Coleman, Peter Duffy, Jane Furniss, Bill Galvin, Tom Keevil, Cindy Leslie, Moni Mannings, Paul Marsh, Sara Nathan, Malcolm Nicholson, Peter Phippen, Enid Rowlands and Professor Shamit Saggar.
Read more about this topic: Solicitors Regulation Authority
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do—I just did it.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)