2018/19 in review
14 December 2020
Welcome to our suite of corporate reporting for the 2018/19 year
Feedback on last year's Annual Review indicated that people were looking for more concise and targeted information on the areas of our work they were most interested in. So, this year, we are publishing separate but connected reports on Authorisation, Anti-money Laundering, Client Protection, Education and Training and our enforcement work (published under the title: Upholding Professional Standards).
2018/19 was a busy year for us. We brought in new Transparency Rules that mean firms must publish a range of information about their services, and we concluded work to introduce our new Standards and Regulations. You will see that we made important progress during the year in developing the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination, which will ensure consistent high standards at the point of entry to the profession.
The Upholding Professional Standards and Client Protection reviews look at how and when we step in to enforce and maintain standards and set out some of the themes we saw in 2018/19. This year, Upholding Professional Standards also looks at the diversity characteristics of the people in our enforcement processes and which shows overrepresentation of some groups. We will soon be commissioning independent research to better understand the wider structural reasons for this.
The drive to combat money laundering continues to be a focus. In 2018/19, we undertook significant work to make sure law firms have the necessary checks and balances in place to avoid the risk of being targeted by money launderers.
Each report also looks ahead, outlining key projects in the context of our new Corporate Strategy. We will, of course, continue to report our progress as we move forward. You can find out more in our Board papers and we publish a range of information on our wider work.
We plan to develop our corporate reporting in future years and publish information in a timely fashion. We aim to publish 2019/20 data in the first quarter of next year, and we will focus more on the year's data, rather than the way we do things. As ever, I encourage you to get in touch and let us know what you think to help us to refine our plans.
Anna Bradley, Chair of the SRA Board