The Legal Services Commission's (LSC) chief executive, Carolyn Regan's assertion that higher-quality advice costs less than poor-quality advice (see [2007] Gazette, 26 July, 16) is contradicted by the LSC's own data.


In my main area of practice, housing law, the LSC recently disclosed, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, details of the average case cost against peer review score for the period from May 2006 to April 2007.



For this period, the average cost per case for a category 1 (excellent) supplier was £288.72, for a category 2 (good) supplier £250.49, for a category 3 (borderline competence) supplier £186.19, and for category 4 and 5 (incompetent) suppliers £157.16.



The proposed fixed fee for housing cases from October 2007 is set at only £171 per case.



Ms Regan says that 'poor advice can be worse than no advice at all'. I could not agree more - so why set the fixed fees at levels that will reward those who are incompetent and drive quality suppliers out of business?



Gareth Mitchell, Pierce Glynn, London