PC Renewals – Letter from The Law Society
Presidents of Local Law Societies
1 November 2012
Dear President,
PC renewals 2012: Thursday, 1 November – Friday, 14 December
I am writing to you about the new PC renewals process, which begins today.
We are most grateful to all those members of the profession who have worked with us, following the difficulties that were experienced during last year‟s round of renewals.
In response to the profession’s feedback, we have made the following main improvements:
- Making applications easier to complete, through simpler navigation and provision of detailed guidance.
- Making it possible for organisational contacts in each firm to process bulk applications on behalf of colleagues.
- Enabling a one click “record complete” facility, allowing multiple records to be confirmed as correct during bulk renewal applications.
- Improved searching and sorting of an individual‟s records to make viewing and editing easier.
- Making improvements to the supporting IT systems to increase their reliability.
We have not be able to adopt every suggestion made in time for this year‟s renewals, but we will continue to improve our online systems during 2013.
Other measures include:
- Detailed guidance being provided to organisational contacts and authorised signatories six weeks in advance of „go live‟ date.
- Publishing the text of the bulk renewal form questions and related guidance on the web six weeks in advance of „go live‟ date.
- Detailed Frequently Asked Questions being made available on our website.
- Top tips and a readiness checklist to help those completing the forms prioritise their workload.
- A redesign of the mySRA web pages.
- Extended opening hours for the Contact Centre (0800-18.00, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; 09.30-18.00, Tuesday; 10.00-14.00 Saturday . Tel: UK 0870 606 2555; Int: +44 (0)121 329 6800.
- A recording of a webinar held on 24 October, in which participants were taken through the bulk renewals form step by step. This is available at: www.sra.org.uk/webinars.
- A webinar being held on 21 November devoted to answering questions that have arisen in the process of completing forms.
While it is never possible to guarantee that there will be no glitches in an exercise of this size and nature, I am confident that the SRA will deliver a significantly enhanced process this year, and am most grateful to all of you for your patience and co-operation.
Yours sincerely
Charles Plant
Chair, SRA Board