The Office of the Legal Services Ombudsman (OLSO) is facing a 'deepening crisis', the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) claimed this week.

The union also accused the ombudsman, Zahida Manzoor, of not practising what she preaches by outsourcing cases, having previously expressed 'serious reservations' about the Law Society doing the same.


The union, which represents 90% of staff at the Manchester-based office, voiced concern that the performance of the body responsible for overseeing the way legal professional bodies handle complaints is 'being seriously undermined' following the outsourcing of 'a large portion of its caseload' to a private firm called Safecall. This recently came to an end and cost £60,000. The union expressed unease over 'an apparent failure' to tender the work and a lack of safeguards.


David Vincent, PCS branch secretary for Greater Manchester, pointed to the ombudsman's concerns over the Law Society's outsourcing of complaints-handling to law firms.



In her 2004 annual report, Ms Manzoor said one of her reservations was 'unease over possible variations in the quality and consistency' of service. However, she backed it as a 'pragmatic' short-term solution to reducing the backlog of complaints.


A spokeswoman for the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), which handles media relations for the OLSO, said Safecall had arranged for the OLSO to engage and train up to five homeworkers on short-term contracts because the office had lost similar consultants it regularly used to handle peaks in caseloads. DCA procurement rules were followed, she added, while as a matter of course OLSO's legal adviser and the ombudsman herself check every report.


The PCS also complained of shifting resources away from in-house staff to self-employed caseworkers. The OLSO says it is good practice not to be overstaffed, but to have external capacity to deal with peaks. There are also three new staff caseworkers starting this month, taking their number beyond that of a year ago.


Mr Vincent added: 'We are gravely concerned about the negative impact that flawed recruitment practices and dubious outsourcing is having on OLSO's performance. OLSO completed around a third fewer investigations between 1 April and 31 December 2004 than during the same period in 2003.'


The DCA spokeswoman said: 'The Legal Services Ombudsman reports that the office is on track to meet its performance target of 90% of all reports issued within six months for 2004/5.' The backlog fell 32% between November 2004 and February 2005, although the number of incoming cases rose 9%, she said.


The Law Society had no comment.