Press Releases pre-May 2010

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has announced today that, after consulting with criminal defence solicitors and representative groups, it will issue a new 3-month rota for duty solicitor slots until the end of September that is based on the current allocation system.

Most respondents to the consultation favoured maintaining the current system based on present numbers of employed duty solicitors rather than introducing interim arrangements ahead of the wider reforms being introduced in October. The interim arrangements would have been based on a ‘snapshot’ of numbers of duty solicitors employed by each firm in November 2006 when the initial proposals were made.

Announcing the outcome, Criminal Defence Service Director Derek Hill thanked the profession for their thoughtful responses to the consultation and apologised for the uncertainty caused by the change of plans.

“The majority of respondents to the consultation wanted the current allocation methods to continue until October. They wanted certainty of rota fixtures for the coming months.

“We will collect data on any firms who reduced their duty solicitor numbers in response to the LSC’s original announcements and will consider this in deciding on a way forward from October 2007.”

The LSC launched this consultation in April after announcing that it would not be possible to calculate duty solicitor slots for the next few months on ‘historical volumes’ of work as originally planned.

Discussion with providers highlighted inaccuracies with the data that included: the opening of new police stations during the reference period; some police stations being initially attributed to the wrong duty solicitor scheme; and service providers billing work to a single account number rather than individual accounts for separate schemes, or billing work to the wrong police station code.

After extensive testing, it is clear that undertaking this exercise will not deliver robust information on which this policy can be based. We will introduce new methods for recording such data from October to enable this option to be reconsidered in the future. However, this option would not be possible for at least a year.

The LSC will shortly set out plans for slot allocation from October this year, as part of our response to the wider consultation of police station reforms. We will seek to maintain the original drivers of our proposals to start the transition towards a system of best value tendering based on quality, capacity and price.

Media contact:

Dan Kellingley Tel: 020 7759 0415

Notes to editors:

1. The full response to the consultation on interim measures for slot allocation is posted on the LSC’s website.

2. The LSC has already introduced a number of measures to ensure market stability in legal aid services in police stations. These include:

• Assisting service providers to make the transition to the new October arrangements by allowing accredited representatives to undertake duty work.
  
• Ensuring high quality by requiring that a designated fee earner undertake 50% of magistrates’ court work. Designated fee earners are either an employee of a firm or a representative who receives supervision and training from that firm.
  
• A moratorium on new firms entering the publicly funded criminal defence service until October (with exceptions for certain circumstances, e.g. ensuring there are enough service providers in a given area).