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Three new Executive Directors will be joining the Legal Services Commission to continue the transformation of the organisation from one that administers legal aid to one that commissions legal aid services in the market, it was announced today.

The Executive Directors will be:

• Hugh Barrett
• Phil Lambert
• Hazel Parker-Brown.

From the end of this year, the LSC will be structured around three Directorates:

• Commissioning
• Business Support
• Corporate Services.

Chief Executive Carolyn Regan said: “These appointments are an important part of ensuring that we have the right skills, right experience and right structure for our future commissioning role. We are making good progress with our major programme of reforms to how legal aid is delivered. Now we need to change our own organisation so it is better aligned for the tasks and challenges ahead.

“Our new commissioning structure gives more focus to our key activities in the evolving legal aid market. The basic model is one of nationally-organised functions with a strong local presence. It will greatly increase our business efficiency and lead to more consistency across our organisation.

“We value highly our links with providers, partners and stakeholders whether they are national, regional or local. We will maintain and strengthen these links within the new structure through relationship managers. Legal aid providers, for example, will find that we are more tailored to deal with their size and scope of business, at a single point of contact.

“I am pleased that we have been able to appoint such a strong top team to lead our organisation and I welcome them to the LSC. I would also like to pay tribute to the current team who have delivered the changes so far and made such a valuable contribution to our organisation and the vital work we do in giving people fair access to justice.

“We help many of the most vulnerable people in society who could not otherwise afford to resolve major problems affecting their lives and hopes for the future. We are all, including our new team, deeply committed to continuing and improving that work while ensuring legal aid services provide good value for taxpayers’ money.”

Hugh Barrett has been appointed Executive Director for Commissioning. Hugh currently works in the Department for Communities and Local Government as a commercial director with responsibility for the major IT project to improve the national resilience of the Fire and Rescue Service. Prior to that he was Chief Executive of OGC buying solutions, an executive agency of HM Treasury. He has also held commercial roles in BT, Mars and British Airways.

Phil Lambert has been appointed as Executive Director for Business Support. Since 2007 Phil has been Head of Business Process Outsourcing Performance at ICI plc. He has also held shared services roles at director level with the Medical Research Council, HBOS and Tetra Pak Business Services Ltd. He has also held senior operations roles with FISERV (Europe) Ltd and NatWest Bank.

Hazel Parker-Brown has been appointed as Executive Director for Corporate Services. Hazel has been Corporate Services Business Director at the Commission for Social Care Inspection since 2004. Before that she was at the Department for Transport. During her career Hazel has held national roles in multi-site organisations with responsibility for a wide range of corporate services including human resources, information technology, finance, estates, legal services, secretariat services and governance.

All three new Executive Directors will be in post by January 2009.

Media information

Daniel Kellingley   Tel: 020 7783 7220

Notes to editors

The posts were advertised in the national press, in the minority ethnic press and internally. It was a very thorough, open and fair selection process. The current Executive Directors were invited to apply.

The current LSC Executive Directors are:

• Richard Collins (Policy) and David Godfrey (Corporate Services) who both decided not to apply for any of the new roles and to take this opportunity to explore alternatives outside the LSC
• Helen Riley (Organisational Transformation) who will be the Director of Case Management (Civil) in the new structure
• Gary Robertson who will be continuing his Interim Executive Director role to assist with the handover to the new Executive Team
• Crispin Passmore (Interim, Policy) will have a key role in the new Commissioning Directorate which will be announced shortly.