- Legal Aid Agency needs
to fix CCMS flaws or delay implementation, say Costs Lawyers
- Report endorsed by
groups including Law Society, LAPG, Resolution and LAG
The
Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is in 'institutional denial' about the fundamental flaws
in the new Client and Cost Management System (CCMS) that it is imposing on all civil
legal aid providers, and unless this changes the preparation and payment of
bills will be seriously delayed, the
Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) has warned.
The LAA has spent years
building and piloting CCMS in an attempt to bring online how it administers £670m
of its annual civil legal aid budget. CCMS becomes
mandatory from 1 October 2015 and is projected to cost £69m over its lifetime.
In
a comprehensive report on the problems practitioners are experiencing with CCMS,
the ACL says that it actually 'deteriorates
existing business processes' with poorly implemented functionality, while some
required functionality has been 'missed completely'.
The report has been endorsed by
other groups that are pressing the LAA to rethink its strategy on CCMS, such as
the Law Society, Resolution, the Legal Aid Practitioners, Group, the Mental
Health Lawyers Association and the Legal Action Group.
Written by the ACL’s Legal Aid
Group, which has been involved in piloting the CCMS, the report says it can
take months for the LAA to fix bugs, even when they relate to core issues such
as the wrong remuneration rate. This reflects an approach that does not
acknowledge issues or design gaps for what they are.
'There is even a lack of
understanding about the basics of billing, like the difference between an
estimate and an actual,' the report says. 'This often ignores case law, court
procedure rules and even requirements in the LAA’s own contract with
providers.'
The ACL calls on the LAA to
recognise the problems with the system – which the report lists in order of
priority – and to delay its implementation if they cannot be fixed in time.
'Bills
will take longer to complete and are likely to be held up by requests from the
LAA for standard information that cannot be initially included within the bill,
and are more likely to be rejected due to errors caused by process
deterioration,' the report concludes. 'This will result in significant delays
to payment, which will impact upon the cash flow of providers who are already
operating on profit margins that do not allow significant (if any)
contingency.'
