In July 2025, the Bar Standards Board (BSB) launched a consultation to make their enforcement process more efficient and effective, enhancing transparency and reinforcing fairness.
In October 2025, the Bar Council submitted a response to the BSB consultation. A working group drawn from members of our Ethics Committee and our Equality, Diversity and Social Mobility Committee drafted the response, with input from the Bar Council’s Regulation Panel.
The consultation was wide ranging in its proposals, covering issues such as the composition of tribunal panels, transparency of proceedings, the fitness to practise regime, the Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Services (BTAS) powers, communication with a respondent and presumption of anonymity.
The BSB sought to address some of the issues raised in the FieldFisher enforcement review that it commissioned in 2024 and the recently published Independent review of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment at the Bar, undertaken by Baroness Harriet Harman KC and commissioned by the Bar Council.
The main points in our response were:
- We are pleased to see some of the recommendations of the FieldFisher and Harman reviews being addressed.
- The need for efficiency within the enforcement processes needs to be balanced with fair process.
- We would like to see greater transparency in certain parts of the enforcement process, in so far as is compatible with GDPR considerations. For example, we consider that all case management and interlocutory application hearings should generally be held in public and that the BSB should formulate guidance on media and non-party access to Bar tribunal documents, with a view to making it easier to access them.
- It is necessary that in dealing with a complaint or investigation, protected characteristics need to be recognised, and given due consideration.
- We wish to see the BSB improve their communications with barristers and complainants about the process.
We support the proposals to:
- Introduce an overriding objective.
- Introduce a power for BTAS to regulate its own procedure.
- Give BTAS responsibility for case management.
- Delegate certain case management decisions to the BTAS executive, namely uncontested administrative decisions; or matters not involving legal argument.
- Widen the Disciplinary Tribunal’s power to impose an immediate suspension or conditions, pending any appeal, where it considers it necessary to protect the public or is in the public interest.
- Allow service by email unless this is not appropriate or viable because of an individual barrister’s protected characteristics.
- Simplify the grounds for referral to an interim panel and the imposition of interim orders.
- Replace the current system with a simple proposal to list the hearing within 21 days to help avoid barristers causing delay but only if this is done in consultation with the barrister and there is some scope for deviation from this timeframe where there is good and justifiable reason for it to be listed later than 21 days.
- Rebrand the fitness to practise regime, with the caveat that consideration needs to be given to use of the term ”ability to practise” and amend the threshold for referral to the newly named health process.
- Move the date of publication of disciplinary proceedings being initiated against a barrister to align with the charges being served on a barrister.
- Introduce a presumption of anonymity for any witness who is making an allegation of a sexual or violent nature.
We did not support the proposals to:
- Introduce a power to add allegations of non-cooperation during an investigation.
- Broaden the power of the Chair of the Independent Decision Making Body (IDB) to impose an immediate interim suspension.
We also suggested that:
- Whilst we agree the five member panel could be reduced to three members, in both the disciplinary panel and the IDB, for efficiency and costs effectiveness; we think the legal majority in the disciplinary panel should be a barrister majority, or a barrister-and-judge majority, to maintain basic principles of being judged by one’s professional peers. The Chair should be a KC or judge rather than the 15 years practise the BSB is suggesting as a minimum criteria. This is because these appopintments are subjected to a vigorous and external vetting processes, command respect and a KC or judge will have first hand experience of the code of conduct.
- Retaining a non-legally qualified majority in a reduced panel of three at the IDB is concerning because there could be a lack of sufficient and appropriate legal input into IDB decision-making, leading to more challengeable decisions.
- Costs orders should be imposed by the tribunal based on the facts, rather than the ability of the respondent to pay them.