Legal Ombudsman draft business plan and budget 2026-27 – Law Society response

The consultation

The Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) is consulting on its draft business plan and budget for the LeO service for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027.

LeO forecasts a continuing increase in demand for its service, which is similar to many other ombudsman schemes.

It suggests rising demand may result from growing consumer knowledge and confidence about:

• the right to complain
• the process of making and pursuing complaints

This is facilitated by online advice and generative AI (GenAI) tools.

LeO also projects that the backlog of complaints will be around 3,378 and 3,754 in March 2026 – far above the original target of 500 to 1,000.

The plan proposes a budget increase for the LeO service to £22.4 million.

Read the draft business plan and budget on the LeO website.

Our view

We acknowledge that LeO has achieved progress through its early resolution initiatives, but we remain concerned at its continued failure to:

• reduce the case backlog
• reduce customer journey times
• address concerns of staff productivity

This is particularly concerning as LeO is proposing to undertake additional work – including a Scheme Transformation Review – while struggling to deliver its core statutory function of being a speedy complaints resolution service.

LeO must effectively and efficiently deliver its core function before it takes on additional work streams.

As part of a Scheme Transformation Review, the OLC is exploring broader reform, including potential changes to primary legislation, to its Scheme Rules and changes to its case fees. The Scheme Rules were only amended two years ago.

Furthermore, as recently as August 2025, a case fee consultation was undertaken on a proposed inflation-linked increase to case fees from £400 to £600, and this proposal was welcomed by most respondents.

We believe that a limited review ought to be sufficient to look at ways to address the increased demand for LeO’s service.

We suggest that LeO focuses on operational efficiency, explores outsourcing and automation, and makes sure any budget increases are justified by demonstrable improvements in performance.

We do not support LeO’s ‘recommended’ budget increase of 12.1%. LeO needs to do more to increase efficiencies to meet demand.

What this means for solicitors

Maintaining fairness, transparency and timely resolution of complaints is essential to upholding public trust and integrity of the legal profession.

Despite the very high satisfaction rate for the legal service provided by the profession, LeO states that first-tier complaints handling needs improvement.

We recognise the importance of constantly striving to improve complaints management at the first-tier stage.

We would also support greater efforts by LeO to get its own house in order by focusing on its core statutory function.

We support the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) policy of seeking proportionate improvement in the resolution of first-tier service complaints.

Firms’ complaint procedures should be more prominent and accessible to all clients for reasons of transparency, fairness and the public interest.

Next steps

The consultation closed on 16 December 2025.

The OLC will review the feedback before finalising its business plan and budget.

The final business plan and budget will be published in spring 2026, after consideration by the LSB.