At what cost?


I attended a not-for-profit (NFP) meeting convened by the Legal Services Commission (LSC), at which information was given out on the measures that will be used to determine who can be a preferred supplier.



Solicitor contract-holders have been operating under the fixed fee for some time. The new standard fee due to come in from October 2007 is seen generally as an increase to the fixed fee. That initially seems like good news, but I have now been informed that one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) used to assess an application for preferred supplier is whether a supplier's average costs are less than 20% of the new standard fee. If they are, you will have failed one of the KPI tests.



Many solicitor contract-holders like ourselves have had much lower costs than the NFP sector because we have had to comply with a much tougher costs regime. The theory put forward by the LSC is that cheap files equal poor quality. I would challenge this assumption, as the test of quality should be peer review, not costs.



This is part of a bigger agenda to move social welfare law out of private practice with the advent of one large contract for one supplier (or a conglomerate) advising on the key social welfare areas (seen as welfare, debt, housing and employment). This threatens individual suppliers who offer a good-quality service, but may not have the full range of areas of law.



Yet again, after years of being vigilant on costs due to the fear of the punitive recoupment regime, the LSC has moved the goalposts. Doing the job well within the costs regime is to be used against us. Is there an argument for perverse decision-making or raising reasonable expectations which are now being frustrated?



Lorna O'Reilly, MWRRC, Liverpool