A third of 'trusted' immigration practices face closure
Nearly a third of ‘trusted’ immigration firms could face closure following the outcome of the Legal Services Commission’s bid round last week, solicitors’ groups have warned.
Lawyers also foresaw more bad news ahead for civil legal aid practices as firms await the ‘crunch date’ of the family and social welfare tender result, expected tomorrow and predicted by some to be ‘the blackest day in legal aid history’.
Applicants for immigration and asylum contracts were notified of the result of the tender exercise last week. Contracts were awarded to 252 of the 410 individual offices that bid, with 73% of firms winning some work.
Legal Aid Practitioners Group director Carol Storer said: ‘That’s almost 30% of firms who haven’t got contracts. And many others received contracts for such small volumes of work it may not be viable for them to continue. Almost a third of trusted providers may be out of the game by October.’
Storer said the LSC’s selection criteria were not robust enough and had failed to recognise quality providers. She said the way matter starts were allocated had encouraged solicitors to overbid for work despite LSC efforts to prevent this, and this had distorted the outcome.
Alison Harvey, general secretary of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, said the outcome of the process would cause firms to question whether they will still do legal aid work.
Storer also predicted that tomorrow’s expected outcome of the tender for family and social welfare work would cause further woe for civil legal aid firms.
She said: ‘That will be the blackest day in legal aid history. It will be the crunch date for many firms and seal their fate following the accumulation of the previous outcomes [in the immigration and mental health bids]. It could change the face of legal aid provision across the country.’
Law Society head of legal aid Richard Miller said that as there had been a high number of competitive bids, there will be firms that lose out in most areas.
An LSC spokesman said the immigration and asylum tender process had been robust and transparent, and would ensure high quality advice for clients. He said the tender had been oversubscribed but the number of cases had not been cut.
Comments
Immigration Practices Face Closure
This is deeply shocking. It is already extremely difficult for asylum seekers and immigration detainees to get good representation from trustworthy lawyers.The closure of Refugee and Migrant Justice has meant that many of the people we service in London and Kent are not represented which leaves them vulnerable to continued detention, removal or deportation and falling prey to the unethical legal firms who will take a hard earned savings and do a shoddy job.
This is shocking. The whole
This is shocking.
The whole asylum process is deeply shameful, unjust and unfair. Many essential errors in refusals and determinations. Court hearings are just hasty formalities. Decisions being made within in only days instead of the 3-6 weeks after hearings. The process is very fast, full of errors and cases and evidence are not being looked/examinated thoroughly. People are too often being send back to harmful situations, even torture and death. Good legal representation is very hard to find.
I have to say that RMJ (refugee and migrant justice) who had a good reputation, did make a big mess of at least some of their client's cases and their representation was very poor, while consuming loads of legal aid money for clients and mainly producing lots of paper work. And their communication with at least some of their clients was also very poor. When they went into administration they were not able to help their clients to find new representatives. This results in unjust detention and deportation and people will simply die because of this.
Not all of the legal aid representatives are good and some of the legal firms are doing a good job and are worth paying (and reasonable about managing payments), they are not all bad. It is just very unclear and very hard to find good legal representation for people, within the legal aid system and outside legal aid. Cutting on legal aid is in any case wrong, harmful and a big shame. Overall the whole system needs changing really.
Why are they described as trusted?
The terminology used here seems somewhat strange. Why describe an immigration firm as "trusted?" Surely all immigration firms are properly run and to be trusted? After all, you don't hear other firms being notionally divided into trusted and (presumably) non trusted categories.