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The Legal Services Board is to issue statute-backed guidelines to compel legal regulators to follow its vision of how reforms resulting from the Legal Education and Training Review should be implemented.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has today begun a debate over whether its remit should be widened to capture complaints against the 130,000 unregulated providers who deliver legal services. It has also raised the prospect of becoming the complaints body for a wide range of professionals.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has hit back against Law Society objections to its application to become an alternative business structure regulator, claiming the public interest was “built into accountants’ DNA”.

Yesterday’s announcement that Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling had rejected the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) recommendation that will-writing become a reserved legal activity was not a total shock. I reported in February that the LSB was nervous given Mr Grayling’s anti-regulation agenda and it was encouraging supporters to lobby the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). If nothing else, those (mainly abroad) who fear that the LSB is too close to the government can rest easy – this is the second significant slap in the face for the LSB after the MoJ in 2011 disregarded its conclusion that the case to ban referral fees was not made out.

Requiring all 10,000 law firms to report non-material breaches to the Solicitors Regulation Authority is “unsustainable and cannot be justified”, the regulator’s board will be told today. Meanwhile, the number of firms and individuals facing action over COLP/COFA nomination failures has risen to 928.