There is such a thing as a glutton for punishment, and it seems that is what the Legal Services Commission must be.

After being roundly harangued by the National Audit Office and lambasted by the Public Accounts Committee, and the Ministry of Justice deciding that its financial management has been so lax that it must be subject to direct control, the LSC has now sent out a customer satisfaction survey to providers. The questionnaire, which has been sent to 2,000 firms picked at random from its records, aims to discover ‘what providers think about the service we deliver them’. No doubt some of the respondents will make the point that the LSC did not even manage to pay them on time last month. The commission promises to report back on the results in the summer. Expletives deleted, one hopes.