POLICE: roll-out of Criminal Defence Service Direct criticised


Criminal practitioners this week called on the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to put its new telephone-only advice pilot on hold until it has sorted out unresolved problems created by the Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC).



Criminal Defence Service (CDS) Direct, the new scheme to provide telephone advice to people detained at police stations for minor offences, is scheduled to be piloted in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and West Yorkshire from 1 February 2008. It will be rolled out nationally from 21 April.



However, solicitors said it would be foolish to introduce another telephone project while the DSCC was still mired with problems.

Since 14 January, all requests for publicly funded police station advice have been routed through the DSCC. But solicitors are still complaining of mistakes and delays, including the use of out-of-date or inaccurate solicitor details, delay in contacting solicitors, and DSCC staff mistakenly contacting the duty solicitor where the detained person has requested a named solicitor. The LSC put the problems down to a software bug which it was meant to have resolved last week.





Stephen Nunn, managing partner at Exeter firm Nunn Rickard, said: 'It's a shambles from every direction and a foretaste of what will go wrong with CDS Direct.'



Criminal Law Solicitors Association director Rodney Warren said: 'The remaining problems have to be sorted out, and in any event the roll-out of CDS Direct must be put back until the LSC is sure they've got the DSCC working properly.'



An LSC spokesman said the expansion of CDS Direct would reduce problems as it would 'take on cases currently being referred to individual firms'.



Catherine Baksi