The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal is likely to be significantly cut next year amid a move to smaller premises and a shrivelling of its workload.
The tribunal has applied for a budget of £2.52m for 2024/25, 41.4% less than for the current year.
This year’s outlay included a one-off cost of £1.16m relating to relocation to new premises, but even without these exceptional costs, the operational budget is down by 19.5% on a like-for-like basis.
The major driver for costs reductions is that work is increasingly kept away from the tribunal as the Solicitors Regulation Authority extended its powers to sanction solicitors and firms. There is an ongoing public dispute between the SRA and the SDT about the regulator securing unlimited fining powers.
The tribunal is more likely in future to deal with complex cases which require more sitting days.
In the current year, the tribunal expects to handle around 85 cases and to sit for 263 days. Caseloads are down from 136 in 2021 and 118 in 2022. But the completed sitting days were just 239 in 2021 and 180 in 2022.
In 2024 the SDT expects to receive a maximum of 108 cases from SRA and lay applications and to require 260 sitting days.
The budget forecasts appear in a paper presented to the Legal Services Board for its monthly meeting today.
Last year the LSB had asked the tribunal to consider whether it needed permanent physical courtrooms, after it had emerged that operations had to be moved from the current premises.
The SDT has now confirmed it expects to enter into a lease for new accommodation before the end of the year, with in-person and hybrid hearings operational from January.
The five physical courtrooms and significant staffing area at the current tribunal HQ have been deemed surplus to requirements: instead the new premises will have one large court room which can be split into two, to reflect the reduced number of hearings that will be held.
With 50% smaller premises, the SDT expects buildings and office costs to be 12% of the SDT budget in 2024 as opposed to 21% in 2023. Costs per court – the measure dividing operational costs by the number of sitting days – will be 45% less in 2024 than in 2022.
The SDT appointed a new executive team, including new chief executive Deborah Baljit, in July 2023 and has said this team ‘will spearhead the transparent, cost efficient and independent delivery of the SDT’s vision to remain a key player in the enforcement sector for legal services’.
It was expected that the LSB will approve the proposed budget.
