Good News Saturday

Did you read this in the Times on Saturday like I did?
“Lord Falconer of Thoroton announced that he was in effect scrapping controversial plans for fixed fees instead of hourly rates in family and civil legal aid cases pending a complete rethink. He also pledged to reconsider the timetable for the scheme, which had been due to start in April. It is likely that the proposed market-based reforms will not now come in before 2008.”
Read the entire article here .
Delegates at recent courses will know that I have generally been more upbeat about the likely outcome of this process than most of them. Here is some confirmation of this stance, hopefully with more to come.
UPDATE
At the point of posting this story this I get a very spooky call asking me if I have seen the same story. In addition to that comes some interesting news from a live audit and the LSC’s in-house view of the Preferred Supplier Scheme and social welfare categories. (Ring me if you want an insight). Unsurprisingly the audit team had not had the gist of the Times story explained to them – oh how well Steve and I remember that situation.