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Legal challenges over ‘corner cutting’ force delay to duty contract start date
The start date of controversial new duty solicitor contracts has been put back by at least three months to April 2016, the government has announced.
According to the Legal Aid Agency, 519 out of 520 successful bidders have accepted their contracts, but the volume of legal challenges by unsuccessful firms has forced the postponement from the original date of January 2016.
LAG author and leading housing lawyer Jan Luba QC has been appointed as a full-time circuit judge.
Luba and his co-author Nic Madge recently marked their 30th year of writing Legal Action’s popular Recent Developments in Housing Law articles. He has been allocated to the South Eastern Circuit and will be based in central London.
LAG’s director, Steve Hynes, welcomed Luba’s appointment: ‘Everyone at LAG is so pleased for Jan. The only downside is that housing law is losing his unsurpassed advocacy skills in tenants’ rights.’
Luba has been a barrister at Garden Court Chambers since 1992.
The LAA has also advised providers that there is a ‘backstop’ start date of January 2017 to allow for any further delays. All current standard crime contract holders are being permitted by the LAA to continue duty and other work until the new start date is confirmed. Zoe Gascoyne (pictured), chair of the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, said she believes the LAA is paying the price ‘for cutting costs and cutting corners’ in how it has managed the procurement process. It is very concerning that due to ‘lack of training’ and ‘misunderstandings’, the assessors appear to have made serious errors in marking the bids, she added.
The Law Society is calling on the Ministry of Justice to agree a review of the procurement process to halt the costly litigation that is now under way. Jonathan Smithers, Law Society president, believes there is a ‘serious risk of a knock-on effect on access to justice for clients’, as many firms are at risk of folding due to the combined impact of the tenders and fee cuts.
CLSA believes the MoJ should abandon the tenders and is offering to work with it on alternatives as, according to Gascoyne, there are ‘plenty of savings to be made in the criminal justice system’, rather than wasting scarce resources continuing to defend the legal challenges to the tenders. In her comments to Legal Action, Gascoyne was at pains to stress that, despite the litigation, ‘engagement between practitioners and the government is good at the moment’. She would not be drawn, though, on whether the justice secretary was still prepared to look again at the second fee cut as part of the their ongoing negotiations.