New regulations dealing with complaints against judges are coming into force at the beginning of next month in UK. They are designed to speed up the process and provide a service that is fairer, both to judges and complainants.

So it seems a strange time for Lord Carlile QC to be calling for the creation of a judicial inspectorate. Why not wait and see how well the new arrangements work?

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 gives the lord chief justice powers to suspend holders of judicial office facing or convicted of criminal proceedings. He can also make regulations dealing with misconduct by judicial office-holders.

Misconduct does not appear to be defined by statute but it clearly excludes decisions taken by judges in the course of their duties. You can`t accuse a judge of misconduct if you disagree with a judge`s sentence or a ruling: that`s a matter for higher courts.

However, misconduct does cover the way in which judges carry out their duties. A high court judge was publicly reprimanded this year for "unacceptable delay" in handing down a judgment.

A court of appeal judge received a reprimand last year "for receiving a driving ban and for failing to adhere to the guidance regarding the reporting of traffic offences". A coroner resigned over the appointment of a deputy after being told he faced the sack.

Even so, some aspects of a judge`s personal position are for the appeal courts to deal with. In March, a firm of solicitors asked Mr Justice Peter Smith to recuse himself – in other words, stand aside – from hearing an application against them to pay some of the costs of a case in which the judge had found against their clients. He decided not to. Allowing an appeal last month against Smith`s decision, the court of appeal "reached the clear conclusion that this was an exceptional case and that there was apparent bias stemming from the facts of the case which meant that the judge should have recused himself from hearing the wasted costs application".

To support the lord chief justice and the lord chancellor in handling allegations of misconduct by judges, the Ministry of Justice set up an Office for Judicial Complaints in 2006. From next month, this will be known as the Judicial Conduct and Investigations Office. Although its staff provide administrative support, the new regulations make it clear that judges will continue to be investigated and judged by judges.

The regulations also require all complaints to be lodged within three months instead of 12 months as at present. It follows that any further complaints about alleged misconduct between October 2012 and June 2013 must be lodged by the end of this month.

What Carlile is arguing, in an article for Counsel magazine, is that there should be an inspectorate that could deal with problems before they lead to complaints.

The inspectorate, a small team of judges, "would be able to carry out routine and unannounced visits to courts without there necessarily having been a complaint", he said. "The judiciary and the legal profession could refer issues to them falling short of formal complaints; for example, when a resident or presiding judge was concerned by suggestions of serious `judgeitis`, as occasionally happens with relatively new judges."

As defined by Lord Hailsham in 1978, the symptoms of judgeitis, or "judges` disease", include "pomposity, irritability, talkativeness, proneness to obiter dicta [statements not necessary for the decision in the case], a tendency to take short-cuts".

Visits by the judicial inspectorate might be unannounced but they would not go unnoticed. Members of the public sitting at the back of a court sometimes fail to realise that judges observe everything that happens in the courts over which they preside. They are likely to find the sudden appearance of inspectors in the back of the courtroom deeply distracting. Whichever lawyer happens to be addressing the court at that time may well be put at a disadvantage.

Carlile`s argument is that judges are almost the only public servants not subject to formal inspection, performance review or quality assurance on a regular basis. He argues that judges judging judges – which happens already in the ways I have described – can be no threat to judicial independence. But that, in itself, does not make it a wise use of scarce judicial resources.