I am preparing 2 appeals at present, Helen has 3, as ever individual files flutter in and out. An abysmal ICA determination has just settled on my desk.
Earlier today I summarised the current LSC approach to assessment as follows:
“I am not prepared to discuss my findings they can just go to the ICA if you disagree”
In one recent case they seem to concur
“we will refer the matter to an ICA to consider in most uplift matters” (emphasis added)
Now we know, and respect, quite a few ICAs – some got to know and instruct us during the olden days of Costs Committees. That said we have had recent experience of determinations of such shocking incompetence, that even the LSC have conceded and referred the matters back to a new ICA.
Our Freedom of Information forays on the subject, on the most charitable interpretation, show a system not operating as required under contract.
Perhaps worst of all this now all takes place behind a wall of secrecy where even basic, potential conflicts of interests are only haphazardly checked. It should be a transparent and fair process and, more over, should be seen to be so. It is not.
The LSC are aware of all of this (indeed are responsible for most of it) but seem increasingly to be using it as a way to avoid assessment, downgrading the role of the ICA in the process.
At the time they disappeared I was sick of Cost Committees, they dominated my life, and created a level of responsibility and stress which was not healthy. I also had the worst experiences of my professional life with a couple of “idiosyncratic” Chairmen. I was demob happy at the end of the Contract Compliance Wars.
I would now however welcome them back with open arms and now regard their abolition as a major factor responsible for the dumbing down of the LSC’s communication with the profession.
