Lawyers set date of legal aid go-slow

By Anne Mizzi and Neil Rose

Up to 1,000 legal aid practitioners are set to participate in a 'week of action' from 3 July to protest against the continuing freeze in remuneration rates.

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group will encourage its members to do at least one thing during the week, such as: refusing to do any publicly-funded work for a day, take down Community Legal Service (CLS) promotional material, writing to the government, or inviting MPs to spend a day in the practice.Lawyers advising on benefits claims and housing assistance will be encouraged to take part in the boycott of publicly-funded work, but criminal solicitors will not.The government has reacted angrily, saying the move would 'appal' the public.LAPG chairman David Emmerson said: 'Without a general rates increase in the last six years, firms are struggling to meet demands for access to justice, maintain service quality and keep their overdrafts down.

There is no more slack in the system.

The week of action is intended to draw attention to those concerns in a way which is not detrimental to the clients we serve.'Mr Emmerson said the campaign 'shows our complete frustration that practitioners have not been able to get the key message across that they are struggling financially'.Other groups such as the Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA) are supporting the action week.

CLSA vice-chairman Rodney Warren said there should be 'unity' across the profession: 'I anticipate we will join in.'A Law Society spokeswoman said: 'We share the concerns of the LAPG about the problems that might be caused to clients in relation to access to legal services.

Some firms have dropped out as a result of contracting, but not enough monitoring has been done to discover exactly how badly access has been affected.

But anything that raises the profile of the issues is helpful.'An LCD spokesman said: 'The LAPG is shooting itself in the foot.

The public will be appalled that it appears to be encouraging action which may deny people access to legal advice and assistance.' He added that removing CLS publicity materials 'hurts people in need'.Meanwhile, the CLSA this week complained to the Legal Services Commission (LSC) that the new central bill assessment centre for the south of England is 'arbitrarily' chopping non-standard bills for magistrates' work by 20%, according to CLSA research.The Nottingham centre is taking over from regional centres in Reading, Cambridge and Brighton; while practitioners used to send the bill and file for assessment, now they only have to send the bill.

Mr Warren said the LSC needs to take 'emergency action' as many firms are facing serious financial problems as a result.In a statement, the LSC said 'every effort' is being being made to ease the handover to Nottingham, which is part of preparations for the introduction of contracting.

Nottingham firms are used to justifying the amounts claimed in the body of the bill, it said, and did not send files.

Firms in other regions had been informed of the differences, the LSC said, adding that firms could appeal assessments.

The LSC's operations director, Richard Buxton, has offered to meet the CLSA to discuss the issue.