The seemingly never ending deluge of bad decision making at the LAA continues, leaving misery in its wake. One expects that those making, or at least communicating these determinations know this; in one received this week there was a tacit acceptance that the ICA decision was, as we suggested, perverse, this being said with a linguistic shrug of the shoulders. In another, relating to a very large sum of money, rather than “doing the right thing” came a decision to take a chance on an appeal.
This is as continuous as it is deeply dispiriting. It has been a grim last couple of weeks.
I know I keep banging on about this but surely it really does matter:
As employees of the Legal Aid Agency, our staff have become civil servants for the first time. Therefore as a new Executive Agency of the MoJ we are committed to demonstrating the values required of all civil servants as set out in the Civil Service Code.
With one exception, which has proved pyrrhic in any event, almost everything we have recently seen has been a cost-saving motivated rejection. This renders the above quote, from their “Business Plan”, utterly meaningless.
Obviously it is near impossible for shop-floor workers to whistle blow. Neither is it their responsibility to “drive this cultural change”, bottom-up. Perhaps it is as grim for some of them as it is for us. Surely however someone nearer the top of the pyramid must know this and feel obliged to say or do something?
