Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC)

On this page:

About the Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC)
Changes in procedure
Notifying the DSCC where instruction is received from a client’s family or friends
Notifying the DSCC about a change of contact details
Performance statistics
For more information

About the Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC)

The Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC) records basic details of the alleged offence before passing the case on to a duty solicitor.

First Assist Ltd was successful at the last EU tender and runs the DSCC contract for the LSC.

The centre is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. At present it receives over 460,000 calls from police stations each year and makes 840,000 outgoing calls to solicitors.

Changes in procedure

From 14 Jan 08 all requests for publicly funded police station work, including own solicitor requests, must be made through the DSCC. If the call centre can’t make contact with a client’s own solicitor within two hours, a duty solicitor will be sent.

Routing all calls via the centre will:

give us better information about police station work
help ensure the right cases are referred to CDS Direct when it's rolled out.

This change balances the rights of clients to receive timely legal representation with their right to instruct their own solicitor. Clients may change to their own solicitor at a later stage if their case goes to court.

We have been working hard with local police to ensure that they understand what the change means for them and how to route clients to the right advisor.

Notifying the DSCC where instruction is received from a client’s family or friends

If providers are contacted directly by a client's family or friends and asked to give advice at the police station, they must call the DSCC before accepting the case.

This is to check whether the client hasn't already requested a different solicitor (own or duty).

If the DSCC has already allocated the work to another solicitor then you cannot accept the case.

We’ve produced a standard template to help providers collect and send the information we need. See Documents.

You will need to complete this and send the information to DSCC. All contact details are in the document.

Notifying the DSCC about a change of contact details

It is important to notify the DSCC quickly of any changes to contact details for individual solicitors or firms. The DSCC will first contact the named individual. If they are unable to reach them they will use the provider's general number.

The DSCC will not be able to support any rota used by providers to cover out of hours private client work.

Where rotas are used, providers must ensure that the appropriate person is contactable on the number provided for out of hours work.

DSCC staff will be able to offer advice to providers on how to set up call forwarding and call divert services to meet their needs.

The DSCC will try to use all suitable numbers provided to contact you. The exact frequency and number of calls it makes may vary according to resources and the time of day.

Performance statistics

See Documents for regular performance statistics about DSCC call handling.