Tag Archives: mental health

by | April 28, 2018 · 6:25 pm

LAA amends contracts for GDPR

The LAA has amended all current contracts in order to meet the requirements imposed by the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Law Enforcement Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/680), being implemented under Part 3 of the Data Protection bill. Amendments regarding the GDPR apply from 25 May 2018. Amendments relating to the Directive apply from 6 May 2018.

There are some detailed obligations. The LAA require you to notify them within 5 business days if you receive the following in relation to LAA or shared data:

  • A data subject request
  • A request to rectify, block or erase personal data
  • A complaint or other communication about your (or the LAA’s) handling of data
  • A communication from the Information Commissioner

You must also indemnify the LAA if it is fined because you fail to comply with the legislation.

You can find more information here.

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by | November 27, 2017 · 4:14 pm

Civil and Family contract extensions acceptance deadline

The LAA has sent emails to holders of civil, family and mediation contract holders to inform them about contract extensions to 31 August 2018.

Holders of 2010 contracts (Mediation) and 2013 contracts (Family, Immigration/Asylum, Housing/Debt) need to send back an acceptance form. The letters attached to emails give a deadline of 5 December 2017, the website says 6 December 2017.

Holders of Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme contracts will receive an extension offer in due course.

Holders of welfare benefits, mental health, and community care contracts will have their contracts extended automatically.

Holders of AAP etc., clinical negligence and public law contracts will have their contracts terminated earlier than originally envisaged, so that they will also end on 31 August 2018.

If you haven’t received an email, you should contact the LAA’s central commissioning team: civil.contracts@legalaid.gsi.gov.uk

More information can be found here.

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by | October 25, 2017 · 8:56 pm

Civil and family tender update

There have been several developments since we reported that the LAA opened the tender for face to face civil and family contracts to start in September 2018.

Tender open for HPCDS

The Agency has gone ahead with a complex price competitve tender for Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes (HPCDS), which seems unlikely to solve the crisis in finding sufficient practitioners to provide the schemes; but only time will tell. More information can be found here.

Most people are finding the process straightforward

However, most of the feedback we are receiving from practitioners bidding for face to face contracts is that the process is more straightforward than they anticipated.

People like the button which checks whether they have responded to all the questions they need to.

They also like being able to download a PDF of their bid. On the relevant ITT page, look out for the three little dots in the top right hand corner. If you click on that and then select ‘printable view’, you will be able to download a PDF of your bid.

FAQs

The LAA has issued some initial frequently asked questions – FAQs. These are worth reading. Amongst other things, they confirm that you will be able to withdraw from part of your bid without jeopardising the rest of it (FAQ 10.1).

Miscellaneous NMS

All successful bidders will get 5 miscellaneous NMS; but you can bid for 25 or more to undertake compensation claims for vicitims of trafficking and modern slavery. ATLEU (legal charity the Anti Trafficking and Legal Exploitation Unit) is encouraging practitioners to apply. They point out that this work is ideally suited to employment lawyers, discriminantion lawyers, personal injury lawyers and civil litigators more generally. With claims for failure to pay the National Minimum Wage (which are often a feature of such cases) being worth upwards of £100,000, perhaps this is worth considering? More details can be found on ATLEU’s website.

 

 

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by | September 21, 2017 · 10:03 am

Civil contracts for 2018 – tender open

The Legal Aid Agency has opened the tender for civil, family and mediation contracts to start on 1 September 2018. If you want to do legal aid work after 31 August 2018, you must submit a bid by the closing date and time 10 November at 5pm. Details can be found here.

The contracts will run for three years with an option for the LAA to extend for two years. Existing contracts are being extended.

You need to bid using the LAA’s tendering portal here.

Apart from Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes (HPCDS) and the CLA telephone service, bids are not competitive. As long as you can demonstrate that you meet the LAA’s requirements, and submit a technically correct bid, you will get a contract. The details of the tenders for HPCDS and CLA contracts will be released soon.

Top tips for successful bids

  • Read the Information for Applicants carefully. The answers are almost always in there somewhere
  • Where they are not, submit a question through the message board on the portal – the LAA publishes all questions and answers received
  • Read the FAQs carefully and submit your bid after the final ones are published; but comfortably in advance of the tender closing date
  • Register your bids on the portal as early as you can and start completing the Selection Questionnaire (SQ) and the Invitation to Tender(s) (ITTs) you are interested in. You will know some of the answers straight away and can come back to the ones you need to go away and find information to complete
  • Allocate a small team to the bid – say two people to complete it and a third to check it
  • Make sure several people are registered to receive emails about the bid. Sometimes the LAA raises queries that need to be answered quickly. You don’t want to miss them

The Law Society is running tender workshops throughout England and Wales. They are recommended. Details here.

LAPG is also running workshops between 27 September – 3 October – details here – also recommended.

 

 

 

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by | May 2, 2017 · 9:03 pm

Civil/Family contracts for 2018 tender postponed

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.

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by | March 18, 2017 · 3:01 pm

Legal Aid Agency changes start date for civil and family tender

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.

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by | January 21, 2017 · 6:56 pm

Civil and family tender timetable announced

The LAA has announced that the tender process for civil and family legal aid contracts to take effect in April 2018 will actually start this April, 2017. They will announce their intentions for family mediation contracts in due course. The announcement can be found here.

The agency has reverted to a two-stage process. Stage 1, a selection questionnaire (previously known as a pre-qualification questionnaire – PQQ), followed by an invitation to tender (ITT) in Ausgust 2017 for the following categories:

  • Family
  • Housing, debt and welfare benefits
  • Immigration/asylum (including IRCs)
  • Claims against public authorities (currently known as Actions against the police etc)
  • Community Care
  • Clinical Negligence
  • Mental Health
  • Public Law

The LAA stresses that the tender in relation to the above will simply test organisations’ ability to meet minimum tender requirements and all organisations which can do so will be awarded contracts. However, organisations seeking higher numbers of matter starts may need advanced panel accreditation. Family practitioners will be able to apply for licensed work only contracts if they wish.

Timetable

  • SQ opens – April 2017
  • Notification of SQ outcome – June 2017
  • ITTs open (except HPCDS) – August 2017
  • Notification of ITT outcome – December 2017
  • Verifiation process – January – March 2018
  • Contract starts – 1 April 2018

Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes

Those interested in Housing Court Possession Duty Schemes are warned that the government is currently consulting on whether to increase the size of the schemes, so that some could cover a number of courts. They are also considering an element of price competition in relation to HPCDS work. At first sight, it is difficult to see how economies of scale could result by simply grouping courts together as proposed. The consultation opened on Friday 20 January and will close on 17 March 2017. You can download the consultation paper and respond here.

  • Notification of Housing, Debt and Welfare Benefits contracts will be prior to the HPCDS ITT opening – in October 2017
  • HPCDS ITT opens – October 2017
  • HPCDS ITT outcome – January 2018

More flexibility

The LAA says that the new contracts are likely to be more flexible in a number of ways which practitioners may find helpful:

  • Allowing remote working arrangements such as delivery of advice by email, telephone or video conferencing where appropriate
  • Ability to self grant up to an additional 50% of matter starts over those awarded
  • Ability to reallocate up to 50% of matter starts between your own offices (subject to LAA consent)
  • All organisations will receive 5 miscellaneous matter starts in addition to their category matter starts

Likely changes you may need to plan for

  • Stricter definition of ’employ’ in relation to supervisors
  • Changes to the mental health supervisor standard
  • Limits to representation by counsel/agents in mental health
  • New mental health capacity (welfare) accreditation will become mandatory for that work when appropriate
  • The immigration/asylum contract will reflect changes to the IAAS scheme
  • Immigration/asylum bidders in higher lot sizes will also be able to bid for IRC work

Telephone contracts

The LAA will also be tendering for specialist telephone work, including an element of price competition in the following areas of law:

  • Family
  • Housing and debt
  • Discrimination
  • Special educational needs

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by | October 14, 2015 · 9:15 pm

LAA changes assessment of emergency certificates

Yesterday, the LAA informed the representative bodies that it would be changing its approach to assessment of emergency certificates immediately. As far as we are aware they have not made a public announcement yet. Usually, such lack of notice would attract criticism; but perhaps practitioners should hold fire on this occasion.

First, because the issue relates to the situation where an emergency certificate expires before a substantive is issued. As emergency certificates last for eight weeks, the change will not affect people immediately. Second, because the change is an improvement for practitioners.

Up to the change, if a substantive certificate followed seamlessly with no break in time, the limitation on the substantive would also apply to the period covered by the emergency certificate (as per point of principle 58).  However, if there was a break between the two, work in the intervening period would not be covered and the limitations to each would be applied separately.

From 13 October, the LAA said it will treat work done in any intervening period as being conducted ‘at risk’, and will be paid for if the substantive certificate covers all the work undertaken.

We understand that the LAA will shortly be updating the Electronic Handbook and making an official announcement of this change.

 

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by | March 2, 2015 · 10:25 pm

Legal aid in mental health cases

Our thanks to Mental Health Law Online for drawing our attention to AMA v Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and Others (Mental health : All) [2015] UKUT 36 (AAC). This was a case in which the Upper Tribunal gave some guidance on the respective roles of legal representatives and welfare representatives and the capacity of a patient to make such appointments. At the start of his decision, Mr Justice Charles, the President, said this:

3.     The Appellant attended the hearing and was represented by solicitors and counsel who acted pro bono because he had been refused funding by a decision of the Special Controls Review Panel of the Legal Aid Agency dated 7 October 2014 and sent on 14 October 2014 (six days before the hearing).  I am very grateful to them for so acting, as no doubt are AMA and his mother.  In my view, others are also likely to be grateful because, in agreement with the FtT judge and them, and in disagreement with the Legal Aid Agency decision maker, this appeal is one that raises issues on which it is appropriate for the Upper Tribunal to give guidance.  Understandably there is no prospect that either AMA or his mother could themselves advance the relevant legal arguments.

4.       It is troubling, and this is not the first occasion that I have come across this, that legal aid is refused on appeals to the Upper Tribunal where it and the FtT consider that guidance is appropriate and absent representation pro bono the parties to the appeal and the Upper Tribunal would not have the benefit of necessary representation and argument.  Given that one of the functions of the Upper Tribunal is to give guidance that can be applied by the FtT in cases where parties may well not be represented I invite the Legal Aid Agency to consider whether in such “guidance cases” it should factor in and so expressly deal with the view of the judge (of the FtT or the Upper Tribunal) giving permission to appeal that the case is a “guidance case”.

This is therefore one of a number of cases, across various areas of the law, where senior members of the judiciary have expressed concern about decisions made to refuse funding – see further examples here and here (family),  and here (welfare benefits).

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by | September 4, 2014 · 4:53 pm

Time is running out for old civil forms

Just to remind people, further to our previous post, that time is fast running out to submit pre-4 August forms. Completed paper forms, submitted by post, signed and dated before 1 September 2014, will be accepted by the LAA as long as they are received on or before 5pm on 5 September.

From 1 September 2014, the new forms are mandatory.

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