Unified Contract (Crime) July 2008

On this page:

Contract Amendment Notice
About this contract
Referral fees/fee sharing guidance
Duty solicitor slot allocation Jan 2009 and guidance on office moves
Duty solicitor slot allocation July 2009 and CLAS certificates
What we've changed following consultation
For more information

Contract Amendment Notice

The Ministry of Justice has approved two CDS Funding Orders today (9 March 2010) which will come into force on 6 April 2010. These Funding Orders mean that changes to the current Unified Contract (Crime) are necessary. We have consulted on the contact changes and are now issuing a Contract Notice which will come into effect in 4 weeks time on 6 April 2010.

About this contract

The Unified Contract (Crime) July 2008 came into effect at 00:01 on 14 July 2008.

The Standard Terms are closely based on those for civil providers. We've amended and updated them for crime providers.

The Specification is largely unchanged from the Specification in the General Criminal Contract (January 2008) but we've reordered it to make it easy to understand and work with.

See the Documents panel for:

the Specification
a clause-by-clause tracker to map each clause to the previous General Criminal Contract.

Referral fees/fee sharing guidance

To clarify fee sharing/other payments between providers and advocates under LSC crime contracts we have produced guidance (in the documents panel) which covers the following:

Permitted fee sharing arrangements (and the principle of the Instructed Advocate.)
Payment for advocacy at s51 hearings in the Magistrates Court, including where undertaken by agents.
Agency agreements between Higher Court Advocates.
Payments for the introduction of work (referral fees).

Any use of the term advocate is meant to include barristers (independent or employed) and solicitor-advocates / Higher Court advocates (HCAs) who have rights of audience in the Crown Court.

Duty solicitor slot allocation Jan 2009 and guidance on office moves

Providers have been asking our regional offices whether they may move the location of their office, or whether they may open a new office in a different location. Guidance for these queries can now be found under Documents.

Duty solicitor slot allocation July 2009 and CLAS certificates

Applications for Duty Solicitors - Deadline 14 May 2009

We have recently announced the deadline of 14 May 2009 for submission of applications to join Duty Solicitor Schemes for inclusion in the next rotas, due to commence on 14 July 2009.

We have recently been advised that a delay in processing has meant that many newly qualified Duty Solicitors have not yet received their CLAS certificates from the Law Society.
In light of this we will accept applications from Duty Solicitors who have proof that they have passed the requisite examinations and have applied (and submitted payment) to the Law Society for their CLAS certificate.
In these cases we will, however, require a copy of the relevant certificate to be submitted to us as soon as it is received, and we reserve the right to remove from the Rota(s) any Solicitor who is subsequently unable to produce a valid certificate within a reasonable period of time.

* Please note that, where applications are received after the deadline of 14 May 2009, the relevant firm will not be allocated slots in respect of that Duty Solicitor for the July 09 rotas. The Duty Solicitor will be eligible to receive panel and back-up calls, and will be included in the next rotas to be produced, currently scheduled to commence in January 2010.

For further information please contact your local LSC office.

What we've changed following consultation

We had a full consultation with The Law Society on all the contract documents. We've incorporated a number of their further suggestions.

Key changes include:

we have agreed a new SMP Reconcilliation Protocol for managing Standard Monthly Payments that will give providers more certainty and stability in their monthly payments
we have introduced new provisions on remainder work, including a presumption that providers may continue remainder work for up to two years following termination of the contract (unless terminated for breach)
we have removed the requirement for providers to record travel costs/time in relation to matters and cases which are paid by fixed fees
we have removed the automatic financial penalties for claims which are submitted more than three months late (although it is still a contractual requirement to submit claims on time).

Our powers to amend the contract are now limited to:

changes arising out of external developments in the law or the justice system
minor changes
with the agreement of The Law Society, correcting ambiguities, errors and omissions.

Other changes

We consulted on a number of other changes. We have agreed that, for the Unified Contract (Crime) July 2008:

there will be no change to the way in which Duty Solicitor Slots are allocated
we will not introduce a new performance requirement for Panel and Back-up Duty Call Acceptance
we will not introduce Audit KPIs
we will not introduce re-accreditation of Duty Solicitors.

For more information

See the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page for:

Contract Standard Terms
Annex to Standard Terms
Office Schedule
Contract Specification
Boundary Maps
Guidance
Duty Solicitor Arrangements 2008
Schedule of Duty Solicitor Scheme Rules
Standard monthly payments

We held an application process for the Unified Contract (Crime) July 08.

For more information relating to the Standard Monthly Payment Protocol, please visit the Civil Contracting reconciliation pages.

The consultation documents are also available to read.

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Last updated: 09 March 2010