Looking to the future
Regulatory reform has been a key workstream for the past decade as we’ve made the case for updates to our legislation, then supported the Bill to achieve them through Parliament. The current phase of that work concluded with the passage of the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025, just before year end.
Our 2025-26 operating plan, currently in progress as we publish this report, details the initial stages of our work to implement and operationalise those changes. We started initial planning for this work in 2024-25, with 25 projects in development and a comprehensive programme management approach to ensure coherent and consistent implementation.
This is a significant, multi-year and whole system process. It will involve all of our staff, Board and stakeholders. Through this work we will review, update and refresh almost every aspect of our business. We will draw on our tried and tested approach to agile, continuous improvement and apply it to this work while ensuring we bring rigour and strong governance to these important changes.
This will inform our strategic and operational planning for several years to come.
At the time of writing, we are still in discussions with Scottish Government about the commencement orders and funding needed to allow us to implement these changes.
We are also in discussion with the other regulatory authorities named in the Act – the Lord President and the regulators – to share thinking on implementation. This is in the context of new overarching regulatory objectives set out in the Act, which will apply to all of our work.
The Act amends many of our processes, changing what we do and how we can do it. It gives us new powers and sets new requirements. It takes us into new areas of legal services regulation and brings providers currently outwith existing legal services regulation within our remit.
We believe these changes bring significant opportunities for improvement in efficiency and effectiveness for the public and the regulated sector, as well as new public protections. After a decade of debate, our job now is to deliver the changes Parliament has agreed. This will change the face of legal services regulation, and the SLCC will become a fundamentally different organisation once this is complete. It’s a major piece of work, but one we’re confident we can deliver.