As a locum in personal injury work, I have nothing to do with the activities of the Legal Services Commission (LSC), and so I read with utter astonishment your article concerning what the LSC alleges to be an overpayment of half a million pounds on account to a small high street practice (see [2007] Gazette, 11 January, 5).


It equates to at least three years' legitimate fees for a common law practitioner. If, as the LSC alleges, the work was not done or bills were not being submitted, at what point did the alarm bells begin to ring at the LSC? When it is supposedly under such financial pressure, there must surely be a system in place to prevent any squandering of public funds. How good are the chances of recovery from a firm that has ceased to practise?



Would it be too much to expect that an investigation be considered when payments reach, say, £100,000 with nothing much in the way of justification coming the other way?



Chris Middleton, Blandings, Rotherham