SLCC Budget for 2013-2014

The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC) is funded by a levy paid by legal practitioners operating in Scotland. The SLCC laid its Budget for 2013-2014 before the Scottish Parliament on 29 April 2013.

Commenting on the budget, SLCC CEO Matthew Vickers said: "The SLCC is an independent and impartial gateway for complaints about legal services in Scotland. We receive around 4000 enquiries every year and deal with over 1000 cases so it's important that we are properly resourced to carry out our work. However, we are funded by a levy on the legal profession and we must show good stewardship of the funds we're responsible for. As with other public bodies, we recognise the need to work as efficiently and effectively as we can. We have just completed a comprehensive benchmarking exercise on our staff salaries and have identified substantial savings in running costs so the levy increase has been kept below the rate of inflation at 1.8%. We're working harder too- we expect to close 50% more cases than we did last year."

"We believe that changes to our governing legislation, the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007,would allow us to reduce costs and tackle delays in investigating complaints. We're working with consumer organisations and the professional bodies to identify improvement. Our operating plan for the coming year focuses on resolving complaints earlier (for example through mediation), on providing helpful guidance to the public and the profession, and on working with the professional organisations to promote good practice in client care and complaint handling. Whilst costs and efficiency are to the fore of the responses to our budget from the profession, there is a shared belief in the value of prevention and guidance work in building trust and confidence in legal services in Scotland."