Conclusions and recommendations
Controlling the cost of civil legal help and advice:
1. The Commission's
auditors' understanding of suppliers' businesses should be sufficient
to allow the accurate assessment of potential overcharging at
the time of the audit, reducing the burden on suppliers arising
from mediation processes following the audit.
2. The Commission
should reduce from eighteen months the time taken to remove contracts
from those suppliers where there is evidence of persistent and
significant overcharging.
3. The Commission
should identify the principal reasons contributing to downward
assessments of suppliers' costs arising from its compliance audits,
and provide feedback to all suppliers on common problems and how
to avoid them.
4. The Commission
should examine the reasons underlying the large variation in compliance
audit results across the country, and take action to improve consistency
through measures such as training and peer review.
5. The Commission
should review outcomes achieved for clients by different supplier
types (including solicitors, not-for-profit organisations, those
with specialist accreditation), and the average costs of the advice
and help provided, and use the results of the review to inform
plans for developing the legal aid sector.
6. The Commission's
audits of supplier contracts has shown that overcharging is most
prevalent on immigration and asylum work, particularly in London.
The Commission should act quickly to remove known poor suppliers,
and consider whether the establishment of a specialist unit to
manage asylum contracts would address this problem more effectively.
Assessing the means of applicants:
7. Whenever it has
evidence that an applicant for legal aid may have made a fraudulent
claim, the Commission should disclose information to other relevant
public bodies, for example the Benefits Agency, where permitted
to do so under statute, and refer such claims to the prosecuting
authorities for further investigation.
8. The Commission
should set measurable performance targets for its Special Investigations
and Special Cases Units, to enable their effectiveness to be assessed,
including an assessment of the outcome of publicly funded cases.
Maintaining access to high quality services:
9. The Department
should examine the work undertaken since set up by the Community
Legal Service Partnerships to determine whether they are assisting
in developing local services as intended.
10. Together with
the Community Legal Service Partnerships, the Commission should
determine how to mitigate the risk of a two tier system of legal
aid developing with, for example, telephone enquiry rather than
face to face advice becoming the only help available to some clients
such as those in rural areas.
Collecting debts and reducing administrative costs:
11. The Commission
should manage more actively debts in respect of legal assistance
which are held as a standing charge on property, and which are
effectively a subsidised finance arrangement for those owing money
to the Community Legal Service. It could, for example, take greater
account of changing circumstances which may make repayment more
affordable for the debtor, or consider a limited incentive programme
to stimulate voluntary repayment.
| 
