Found It 

I blame coming back from holidays, a dose of Cairo belly and then having to shout at 80 delegates for 10 hours, but try as I might I could not find this document the other day. It is a new guide to Crime PR compliance from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies prefaced by Prof. […]

Lovely Soup 

I never quite trust evaluation feedback on training courses. Even if you think it is a good course which has gone well you remain suspicious that it is similar to the polite praise for a meal one receives from a house guest. Vanity however encourages acceptance and these therefore appear to be pretty good courses. […]

Trust Exercises 

Informal soundings at Leeds/Bradford yesterday (thats our training course and not the airport) indicate that this was both timely and accurate. Two two further firms report feeling the pinch of this new aspect of partnership working. These revelations followed the morning session when we had been discussing the Preferred Supplier Scheme. The LSC’s chief aim […]

Key Cards 

You all avidly read each new Focus within minutes of its arrival in your in tray I know. This one, number 50, has a new set of Key Card eligibility calculators these numbered 42 and 42a for Civil and Crime respectively. These are applicable for all funding applications post April 10th. Now I’m sure you […]

Cross my Palm with Silver 

I wish we had been doing this blog thing for years. It allows you sagely to add a little blue link back to a particularly perspicacious article. Unfortunately the prediction which currently seems to be coming true predates my conversion to cyberspace, so you will just have to take my slightly (and regretfully) smug word […]

Back 

First day back but unfortunately suffering from the curse of Tutenkhamun. Mixed news greets me – a failed attempt at a PoP (no change there) and notification of another “below competent” Peer Review result balanced against a (partial and only technical) result on a PR appeal (substantive to follow). I of course am doing final […]

Normal service will be resumed 

Andy Bean [Lead Fieldwork Consultant] writes: Simon is due back on Monday so hopefully normal service will then be resumed. I have had an interesting couple of days with the top 10% club raising its head again but in two different formats. The first being in the normal format with 20 Police station claims being […]

NEWS EXTRA 

We have trailed this story a number of times below, but it has taken a little while to arrive at the following final text. This is a client firm currently involved in fairly serious litigation with the Commission, the outcome of which could potentially have far reaching consequences for the profession: Solicitor’s rights under the […]

All Change 

Andy Bean [Lead Fieldwork Consultant] writes: Once again there are more small but irritating changes made to the LSC forms. Many of you should have received your Master Pack Updates with the following Criminal forms updated: * CDS2 * CDS3 * CDS4 * CDS5 Also, new SPAN code guidance has been issued with a couple […]

Temperature Rising 

Andy Bean [Lead Fieldwork Consultant] writes: Simon is now away on holiday and very kindly sending me lots of pictures of big pointy things, more commonly known as The Pyramids. Simon is clearly getting himself acclimatised to the rise in temperature and he will hopefully find this very useful, as clearly back here in wet […]