Knock-on effect: firms to drop legal aid work


Best value tendering (BVT) for criminal legal aid work will cause solicitors to drop out of civil and family work, a survey seen exclusively by the Gazette revealed this week.



A Law Society online poll showed that 67% of solicitors strongly opp?ose the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) proposals to introduce the new procurement method.



The results indicated that more than 60% of firms would cease or reduce their publicly funded civil and family work if they failed to obtain a criminal contract.



Law Society legal aid manager Richard Miller said: 'The figures reveal, worryingly, that failure to secure the contract for criminal work under the proposed system will see many practitioners also drop out of civil legal aid work because the cost of maintaining their legal aid systems for the civil work alone would be too great.



'This potential knock-on impact on civil and family supply must be taken fully into consideration.'



Rodney Warren, director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said the wider impact of this on access to justice would be 'colossal'. He said practitioners agreed that the current payment structure could not carry on, but BVT was not the answer.



Additionally, 85% of the 361 respondents said they would not be in a position to bid at a later stage when the contracts came up for renewal if they were unsuccessful in the first round.



Mr Miller said: 'This starkly demonstrates one of the major problems with the proposals. We have still seen no answer to the question of how there can be adequate competition in any second round of bidding.'



LSC chief executive Carolyn Regan said she would encourage solicitors to respond to their consultation, which closes on 3 March.



Catherine Baksi