By Neil Rose


The Law Society is to make £40,000 worth of ex gratia payments to miners whose solicitors have not yet paid awards made for inadequate professional service (IPS).



Meanwhile, the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) last week wrote to 3,600 former miners in the Rother Valley in a bid to establish whether or not they have a complaint against their solicitors.



IPS awards only become enforceable with an order from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, and a small number of firms have deferred payment pending a hearing before the tribunal.



Law Society chief executive Des Hudson said: 'While solicitors are entitled to take that approach, we are concerned that miners should not be disadvantaged by the delay the hearing inevitably creates. We are conscious that most of the miners involved are elderly and infirm, and the additional wait to receive payment can cause particular hardship to them.



'We have therefore decided to offer ex gratia advances of the compensation awarded to complainants in order to avoid that. The Solicitors Regulation Authority will still seek to enforce the award against the solicitors concerned in the normal way.'



The LCS is working with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform - which provided the miners' details - and local Labour MP Kevin Barron to restore to the miners money that was wrongly deducted from their damages under the government's coal health compensation scheme.



If the pilot project proves successful, it could be rolled out across other mining areas. However, the Gazette understands that a small number of solicitors have objected, threatening possible legal action on data protection grounds, and arguing that the LCS should not be actively procuring complaints.



Speaking at last week's LCS board meeting, chief executive Deborah Evans said she had taken legal advice that confirmed there was no breach of data protection laws. She added that it is 'entirely appropriate that the organisation responsible for legal consumer redress should be available and accessible to all who may have been wronged'.



The letter invites miners to one of five information seminars next week. More than 200 replies were received on the day after the letters were received.