What's new

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has today shared with its staff the future shape of its new Business Support directorate. 

Maintaining a local presence

The changes we intend to make will be implemented over the next 3 to 5 years and will mean that the directorate will operate from 5 processing sites instead of 13 as at present. 

However, the LSC will maintain a local presence at the other 8 sites with, for example, relationship managers and business analysts being located there. 

Services to the public will not be affected.

We have already announced our intention to reduce staff numbers across the LSC from 1700 to 1100 by 2010. The changes announced today are part of that overall reduction.

When will the changes take affect?

Today’s announcement provides a high level overview of plans and timings to give our staff as much notice as possible about these changes.

We do not expect any of the changes we are announcing today to take effect until mid 2009 at the earliest. They will then continue through to 2012/13.

Delivering improved services to clients

These changes are part of the transformation of legal aid in England and Wales, which is designed to deliver improved services to clients. 

More efficient processes and increased use of electronic working will enable us to provide these services with fewer staff and to deliver better value for money for the taxpayer.

Talks with trade unions

The LSC values the dialogue it has with its trade unions and is committed to discussing the plans in more detail over the coming weeks and months. 

We are currently meeting with them on a fortnightly basis to discuss the organisational review that we are undertaking.

Background information

In summary, our intention is that the new Business Support directorate will in time:

• operate from 5 sites
• South Tyneside, London, Bristol, and Liverpool will become centres for processing civil casework
• Nottingham will focus on processing crime casework.