All Change on Quality

The Legal Services Commission has published a paper Assuring and Improving Quality in the Reformed Legal Aid System. It contains statements on peer review, preferred supplier and the ownership of quality standards but provides little certainty for suppliers about what the future really holds.

Peer review

The paper says that the LSC is "committed to the use of Peer Review as the best measure of the quality of advice and representation being provided for clients."
 
However, the proposals mark a change from previous statements on the preferred supplier scheme and may represent a less exacting system than originally proposed.

• The paper states that the rollout of peer review will be linked to the implementation of Best Value Tendering (BVT). This will cover crime initially and civil provision later. In the first two rounds of tendering, crime providers will have to achieve at least a three (threshold competence) at peer review. The paper then says "we will consider whether this should be moved to a minimum requirement of two (competence plus) for future rounds."
• Previously the LSC said they would try to peer review all areas of work done by a supplier at the same time. Now they intend only to review categories subject to BVT.
• They will still carry out benchmarking peer reviews and will use peer review to support bid rounds and to investigate quality concerns that have been raised about a supplier. We infer from these proposals that there will be few reviews carried out in civil categories of law whilst the tendering process for crime is going on but this is not clearly stated.
• The paper says "we will review where the cost of Peer Reviews should lie." Presumably one option is that suppliers should pay for peer review but it is not clear what the LSC intends.

Preferred Supplier

The paper states that the key elements of the preferred supplier scheme have been integrated into the wider reform programme. However, a principal motivation behind the development of the preferred supplier scheme was to improve quality by requiring that suppliers achieve a 1 or 2 rating at peer review. This seems to have been dropped. The reason given is that it would be contrary to EU procurement law to make it a requirement during the course of the existing contract.

Clients and Quality

The LSC says it plans to develop "ways in which better information on the quality of service delivered by individual providers can be made available to clients." We guess that this might mean publishing peer review scores but this is not stated.

Ownership of Quality Standards

The LSC intends that ownership of quality standards and assurance mechanisms should lie with professional regulators. They state that they are already engaging with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to develop arrangements for moving responsibility for quality standards, including peer review, to the SRA. The paper talks of engaging with the NfP sector "to ensure that the future structures work effectively and appropriately for this important sector of our provider base."
 
It has always been ASA's view that there should be a single quality standard for all contracted suppliers and that it should be administered by a single organisation. We are not clear what the LSC intends for the NfP sector but it seems that this will not be the case.
 
Assuring and Improving Quality in the Reformed Legal Aid System