The Legal Aid Agency has announced today that it has had to postpone the civil and family contracts tender, expected to open in May, until after the election.
No new date has been set and the Agency will issue more information when it is able to do so.
Filed under Actions Against the Police, Civil, Community Care, Family, Housing, Immigration, Mental Health, Public Law, Social welfare
The new edition of the Handbook has now been published and pre-order copies are being dispatched. You can order your copy from LAG here.
This book is an invaluable companion and essential reading for all legal aid practitioners, from caseworkers to senior partners. The authors have expertly pulled together information that is not currently available in one place providing the only single volume guide to the criminal and civil legal aid scheme.
‘… admirably clear on some very tricky points. There should be at least one copy in every office where legal aid work is carried out.’ Carol Storer, director, LAPG.
‘I wish I could say “this book is never off my desk” but the truth is my copy of LAG Legal Aid Handbook always appears to be on someone else’s … Essential reading for all practitioners seeking to provide a first class service to clients in a post-LASPO world.’ Phil Walsh Partner/Practice Manager, Miles & Partners LLP.
The LAG legal aid handbook 2017/18 gives practical, step by step guidance on conducting cases, getting paid, advocacy, financial and contract management, performance monitoring and quality standards and an overview of recent policy developments. There are separate chapters on all the major areas of law covered by legal aid and sections devoted to litigators and advisers, advocates and managers.
This edition has been updated to include:
• full coverage of the new 2017 crime contract
• latest changes and updates to the civil scheme
• discussion of current case law and hot topics in legal aid practice
• hints, tips and practical advice from how to manage a contract to navigating CCMS
• specialist chapters on billing, crime, public family law, private family law, housing, mental health, immigration and exceptional funding
• a dedicated section for advocates
• guidance on managing legal aid work and tendering for contracts
• a full round up of the latest policy developments
The only comprehensive guide to the whole legal aid scheme, the new edition features chapters written by expert contributors Anthony Edwards, Richard Charlton, Steve Hynes, Solange Valdez-Symonds and Katie Brown. The LAG legal aid handbook 2017/18 is packed full of case studies, checklists and practical tips. It provides clear and easy to follow guidance on the ever more complex legal aid system and is essential reading for everyone involved in legal aid from new caseworkers to experienced lawyers and managers.
The LAA has published its latest quarterly statistics, for October to December 2016, and they make grim reading.
Filed under Civil, Crime, Family, Housing, Immigration, LASPO, Policy, Social welfare
The brand new edition of the LAG Legal Aid Handbook will be published at the beginning of April. Fully revised and updated, this edition features
The Handbook is edited by Vicky Ling and Simon Pugh, and features contributions from a range of subject experts including Anthony Edwards, Steve Hynes, Richard Charlton, Solange Valdez-Symonds and Katie Brown.
You can pre-order your copy now by e-mailing: direct.orders@marston.co.uk or phoning: 01235 465577, or by clicking here.
Filed under Actions Against the Police, Advocacy, Articles, Civil, Clinical Negligence, Community Care, Costs, Crime, Family, Handbook, Housing, Immigration, LASPO, Mental Health, Policy, Public Law, Social welfare
The MoJ is consulting on making changes to the means tests for civil and criminal legal aid. Currently universal credit is a passporting benefit for all levels and types of legal aid. However, as roll-out continues and more people receive it, the MoJ proposes changing that.
Universal credit replaces a range of benefits, not all of which are passporting. Maintaining universal credit as a passporting benefit would therefore bring into passporting people who would not be passported before – such as those in receipt of tax credits or housing benefit but not income support or jobseekers’ allowance. The government estimates that would cost £14million per year in increased legal aid.
It is therefore proposing amending the passporting rules so that only those in receipt of universal credit and no household earnings would be passported. Other recipients who earn any money outside universal credit would have to go through the full means test and potentially pay contributions. The housing element of universal credit would be disregarded in the same way that housing benefit is now – so that only net housing costs are included in the assessment.
The consultation can be found here, and closes on 11 May 2017.
On the 20th of January, the LAA announced that it intended to run a two-stage tender process for civil and family contracts to start in April 2018 and that stage 1 would probably start in April 2017, with stage 2 in August 2017. In February they announced that a family mediation tender would open at the same time.
On Friday 17 March, they announced that instead they would be running both the selection criteria and invitation to tender stages together in May 2017.
Practitioners will need to remain vigilant and watch out for further LAA announcements. They can be found here.
LAPG has opened nominations for the 2017 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards. Nominations this year are done via the LAPG website here, and close on 28 April. This year’s categories are:
The LAA has published an updated Point of Principle Manual. It includes a new PoP, CLA59, which applies to both civil and criminal work. The PoP says:
Where a provider exercises discretion as provided for under the relevant Financial Regulations an assessor may only overturn a determination that an individual qualifies for services where the provider’s determination was manifestly unreasonable.
This point of principle applies to any aspect of the determination which requires a provider to exercise an element of discretion. It does not override any mandatory regulatory or contractual duty relating to the assessment of means. Any determination that an individual is financially eligible for legal services must comply with all relevant regulatory and contractual provisions. In complying with these provisions providers must have regard to the Lord Chancellor’s Guidance issued in relation to determining financial eligibility.
This is a useful re-statement of the principle that the role of the assessor is not to substitute their own judgement for that of the lawyer doing the work. The lawyer’s exercise of a discretion within the scheme should only be overturned if, based on what was known at the time, it was manifestly unreasonable.
PoPs don’t apply to the 2015 civil and 2017 criminal contracts. However, this is a re-statement of a general principle (see also our post on equivalent case law here, and see CLA56, which applies the same principle to the more limited issue of exercise of delegated functions). As such, the LAA should be taking the same approach across all work.
LAPG has launched a survey to gather feedback on CCMS. It is aimed at all practitioners, not just LAPG members, and will provide valuable information on user perspectives to assist in lobbying the LAA for change. LAPG says:
We want to capture what is happening with CCMS. We receive more email correspondence on CCMS than on all other subjects put together. We have prepared a survey to find out what the current position is with CCMS. The survey is here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NDHNT6W
We hear from the LAA that some practices find it fine but that does not reflect the feedback that we receive. However if you think it is ok then it would be really helpful if you could complete the survey.
Here’s what you need to know:-
- It will remain open until Friday 3 March.
- Please do put CCMS references in – we know people tend to prefer anonymity but we hope that there will be sufficient numbers completing the survey to give people comfort.
- We have piloted it with many people and we are very grateful to them for all their help. The more people completed it, the more problems were raised and we were asked to incorporate more and more into the survey. So it may take half an hour to fill it in comprehensively.
- You can skip sections but essentially the structure is
- Applications
- Amendments
- Billing/POAs
- Incorrect actions and
- General issues such as stability.
- Generally questions ask about CCMS since 1 January 2017. Why? Because if we collect older data and changes have been made, then that is of limited value.
What is the point of the survey? We have told the LAA that we are carrying it out and indeed sent them a draft of the survey. Our aim is to collect up to date information in a form that we can present to the LAA and MoJ. If our members who complain about CCMS are representative of the majority then there are a lot of issues that need sorting. The danger is that the view represented in the LAA Annual Report 2015-2016 goes unchallenged.
The Report said:- ‘The system was rolled out to all civil legal aid providers on a voluntary basis from September 2014, and was mandated in phases during 2015- 16. From 1 April 2016, it became mandatory to submit all civil applications online through the CCMS. Submitting both applications and bills using the CCMS, saves providers time and the cost of sending paper forms through the post.’
The LAA has announced that it will no longer be possible to contact the immigration, exceptional funding and civil high cost cases teams direct. For the next two months direct calls to those teams using existing numbers will be diverted to the main customer service number. After that time they will stop working altogether and you will need to dial customer services direct. It says this is to “simplify” contacting the LAA and to divert resources towards casework.
Affected numbers are:
The main customer service number is 0300 200 2020.
Click the cover to buy the Manual
Click the cover to buy the toolkit
Click the cover to buy the toolkit
Legal aid in the news Legal aid in the news
Legal Aid Handbook 