The “advice line” has been plagued by what could loosely be called operational problems over civil certificates and bills.
The LSC line, which they are steadfastly holding to, is that the mistakes are largely generated from our side of the fence. This may be so, and we have no way of knowing, it has to be said however that managing your submission on a “right first time” basis will certainly save you no end of time, expense and delay. As these are now monitored in the “Provider Dashboard” data you have further motivation for avoiding refusals and rejections.
That said we are not a bad weather vane of common problems in the system. So when we are receiving more calls across the full rage of these types of issues you can be reasonably sure that something is amiss.
Last week we had a cluster of contacts surrounding prior authorities, primarily in care cases. Here the LSC line is, again, resolutely being held; we will only pay at the published rates, we don’t care about “directions” as “we are not bound by the Court” and it matters not how this impacts upon the progress of the case. The judgment in this case appears not to have had much impact.
The cases to hand all defy logic – in one sticking to the above will ultimately cost the LSC more, in another their instance on a 50/50 split of the disbursement effectively kills the case for the assisted person.
Those troubles aside how’s about this for some rules of thumb (we will add contributions to this list from the comments box)
Stick within the published rates
Make sure your experts are aware of this
Patiently explain the situation when directions are being made
Never commit to anything which could cost your firm money*
Make sure all fee earners understand these points
* Pushing the Local Authority to meet shortfall seems a popular tactic in this regard.
