CLS news

Some providers have contacted us to ask if the LSC has imposed a national directive to freeze new matter starts throughout the country. We want to make it clear that there is no new rule which says “no additional new matter starts”.

The current activity around new matter starts is in line with normal LSC contract management activity which we see every year. The only difference this year is that we are looking earlier at allocation levels because demand is higher.

The LSC has a target to deliver at least one million civil acts of assistance in the current financial year, with 700,000 of these to come from face-to-face contracts and Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes. Last year, we exceeded this target by 37,000, and we are likely to deliver an increase again this year.

In fact, if we compare the five-month period of April to August against the same five months a year ago, providers of face-to-face services have already reported 20,000 more matters started. Against this trend, we are likely to deliver an increase of 50,000 more matters this year.

It means that overall, we may end up delivering more than 1.1m acts of civil assistance, more than ever before. That’s almost double the 595,000 acts in 2004-5.

In previous years it has been possible to respond positively to providers’ requests for increases to their contracted new matter starts in the majority of cases. As such, there have been substantial increases in new matter starts year-on-year.

But, as the recent MOJ consultation paper Legal Aid: Funding Reform made clear, we have to live within our budget, and the expansion of legal help in recent years has meant we are approaching the limit of this budget.

So we need to carefully manage the budget position against our wish to continue to deliver an increase in the number of people helped, and we are continuing to monitor the provision in areas where there is a high level of demand.

Whilst we wish to continue to make modest increases to providers’ contracts wherever possible, we can only afford to agree increases where it is necessary to maintain access to services. We do not intend to undertake any active procurement of additional work.
 
Many firms are delivering new matter starts at the rate which we have expected; others are showing significant increases. Thus, we intend to undertake an exercise to remove any surplus new matter starts from providers who are unlikely to use their current allocation.

Once this is completed we will be better able to understand if we can afford to reallocate these matters to areas where demand is highest. At the same we will continue to consider individual requests for modest increases from providers who are at imminent risk of exceeding their contracted amount.

It must be emphasised that access is and shall remain a priority for us, so we have to look at the procurement area as a whole as opposed to individual provider level, in most cases.

This is all in keeping within normal contract arrangements, and, as with every year, we cannot simply do nothing and end up exceeding our budget.

We would encourage any providers with further questions about new matter starts to communicate through the normal channel with their relationship managers.