2.Main Content
Preferred Supplier Scheme – the final proposals
The LSC has published its preferred supplier consultation response. It remains committed to the scheme and states:
"Preferred Supplier strongly enables the move to fixed, standard and graduated fees, as it delivers a formalised method to ensure the quality of the work undertaken under the fixed fee is maintained."
However, the scheme has changed significantly since it was first conceived and these changes make us doubt the above assertion.
Ensuring Quality
Under the finalised proposals for the scheme, peer review of an organisation will take place at the end of the preferred supplier entry process. It will only happen after an organisation has met a number of key performance indicators that will relate to the new contract and payment regime, and has passed a File Assessment Value for Money (FAVFM) audit which will look at matters such as eligibility, means testing and scope.
When assessment of an organisation’s quality of work does take place, it will not be peer reviewed in all its categories of work. Peer review will be carried out on categories where the total value of legal aid work exceeds £50,000 in the previous year and use file assessment for categories valued at £50,000 or under. Where no category has a value of £50,000, an organisation will be peer reviewed in its largest category.
File assessment will be carried out by LSC caseworkers. The LSC gives no detail about what the file assessment questions will be.
E-business
The LSC still plans to make electronic working a requirement of preferred supplier entry. This means that organisations will be required to supply data to the LSC in a format specified by the LSC. They acknowledge that this will involve changes to existing electronic case management systems, which will involve a cost, but state that there will be no grants to help fund these changes. They make no mention of organisations that currently have no case management systems at all.
Carter Review
The document states that preferred supplier has become a key enabler of Lord Carter’s review and that through it, organisations will be able to compete in the market more effectively.
ASA takes the contrary view that the combination of fixed fees and preferred supplier entry criteria may well spell the end for many legal aid suppliers.
Moreover, the large-scale funding changes that are proposed will mean such an upheaval for many suppliers that quality will suffer. The quality measures proposed as part of the preferred supplier scheme are unlikely to be sufficient to guarantee the quality of work the LSC claims to want to buy.
Read the full paper
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