Warwickshire secures licence from SRA for alternative business structure

Warwickshire Legal Services (WLS) Trading Ltd, which launched on 1 October, will not employ staff directly and there will be no fundamental changes planned to existing staffing arrangements, the council said.

The county council employs more than 90 Legal Services staff. In 2016/17 some £1.5m – a third of the legal team’s total income – came from external organisations.

The local authority said WLS Trading would build on its existing legal service provision to other councils and partner organisations and provide a platform for supporting a wider range of public sector clients.

David Carter, Warwickshire County Council Joint Managing Director, said: “The County Council’s legal team has an excellent reputation and already has well established working arrangements in place, delivering legal services to a range of public sector clients.

“With the ABS licence in place for WLS Trading Ltd, we now have greater operational freedom in terms of the external clients we are able to contract with to provide legal services, such as the education, health, housing and blue light sectors.”

Sarah Duxbury, Warwickshire County Council’s Head of Law and Governance, said: “This is a really exciting new development for the legal team. Our passion is for supporting public sector bodies to deliver their objectives by providing pragmatic and solution focused legal advice.

“Our track record in the legal field, coupled with our dedicated team of skilled and motivated lawyers, provide the perfect platform for us to launch the new company and start delivering our ambitions to grow our business and expand our public sector customer base.”

Earlier this month Local Government Lawyer revealed that the legal teams at the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster City Council could become the London arm of LGSS Law, the alternative business structure owned by three other local authorities, as early as 1 December 2017.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority meanwhile published long-awaited guidance last month on a key section of the Legal Services Act 2007 that it was claimed would stop many local authorities’ legal services trading activities "dead in their tracks" unless they set up an ABS to handle work from organisations outside their geographical area.