Legal Services Board appointment
The Lord Chancellor, after consulting the Lady Chief Justice, has approved the appointment of Catherine Brown as the interim Chair of the Legal Services Board (LSB).
The Lord Chancellor has approved the appointment, from 1 January to 31 March 2026, of Catherine Brown as the interim Chair of the Legal Services Board.
Catherine Brown is an experienced non-executive board member, chair, and chief executive who has worked in the private and public sectors. Ms Brown was previously CEO of the Food Standards Agency and is now serving as the first Chair of the Enforcement Conduct Board; an independent oversight body for the civil enforcement sector. Ms Brown was vice chair of the Wellcome Trust advisory group on increasing diversity and inclusion in science and served as an Equal Opportunities Commissioner. She is currently chair of the Internet Watch Foundation; a charity that exists to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material on the internet.
Ms Brown has been a member of the LSB Board since 2019, she was appointed interim LSB Chair in February 2025.
The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the independent body overseeing the regulation of lawyers in England and Wales. Its goal is to reform and modernise the legal services marketplace by putting the interests of consumers at the heart of the system. It is independent of government and the legal profession and oversees the approved regulators which themselves regulate lawyers. The LSB also oversees the Office for Legal Complaints and its administration of the Legal Ombudsman scheme that resolves complaints about lawyers.
Appointments and reappointments are made, by the Lord Chancellor, under the Legal Services Act 2007, and are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments who was consulted regarding the further appointment, without competition, of Catherine Brown as interim LSB Chair. This was to ensure that the LSB had a Chair pending the conclusion of the current campaign to recruit a substantive Chair. This appointment has been made in line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.