One of last weeks areas of friction, as you may well recollect, was with regard to the reporting of September 07 Civil Contract work. It was a late in the day document regarding transitional arrangements which sparked the concern. This stated, contrary to what we to then thought to be the case, that paper claims for civil work would not be accepted after October 1st.
We discussed this with the LSC believing the only rational interpretation of these arrangements was that as this was September reporting it fell under the previous contract and consequently paper submissions were acceptable. In effect we argued the new contract affects the reporting of contract work completed post October, a view supported by the guidance we quoted here on Friday. This view is further supported by the fact that post October 1st a new set of CMRF forms become operational all demanding information not previously required and which the current Online system could not process.
Today an amended version of the document which sparked the issue has been released which states:
“paper forms will still be accepted after October 2007”
(On Friday when I asked for a categoric answer to the question “will paper submissions post October 1st be accepted” I was of course told the opposite.)
How what seemed to us very simple transitional arrangements end up causing such confusion is beyond belief. No sorry it is not, it is par for the course.
UPDATE
The same position applies to the new CDS 6 as Online Marketing confirmed earlier:
“I can confirm that the new CDS6 format that includes the new scheme codes will be mandatory for October’s submission that is submitted in November”.
