Background Part 3 - Complaints Section 55 – Regulatory complaints against authorised legal businesses
147.This section amends the 2007 Act.
148.Subsection (2) inserts new section 7A (complaint determined to be a regulatory complaint). The new section ensures that where a complaint is (or includes an element that is) a regulatory complaint, the Commission must send it to the relevant professional organisation to deal with. This requirement applies in the circumstances where the Commission has previously determined that a complaint (or an element of it) is a services complaint but, having investigated it, subsequently determines that it is in fact a regulatory complaint.
149.Subsection (3) inserts new section 52A (regulatory complaints: duty of approved regulator to investigate etc.). The new section ensures that, where the Commission sends a regulatory complaint to a relevant professional organisation, the organisation investigates and reports on it. It also enables a relevant professional organisation to discontinue an investigation of a regulatory complaint, or reinstate a discontinued investigation, if it considers that it is in the public interest to do so.
150.New section 52A(5) requires that, following the investigation of a regulatory complaint, the relevant professional organisation must send a written report to the complainer, practitioner and the Commission outlining the facts of the complaint and any action which will be taken.