The Legal Services commission (LSC) has issued an apology for the maladministration of a financial exercise that caused 'an injustice' to legal aid solicitors across England and Wales.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has upheld a complaint from the Law Society that the LSC had failed to run a recoupment exercise in a timely fashion and had failed to adequately inform solicitors about the exercise.
The ruling vindicates our concerns about the flawed process implemented by the LSC when it launched the exercise from 2006 onwards to recoup payments on account.
The LSC requested that the firms return the funds, in some cases many years after the client cases had been closed and many firms had destroyed older bulky files.
The Law Society, and a host of firms who were affected by the anomaly, made a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The LSC will now be required to reconsider representations from individual solicitors who were earlier discouraged from bringing their own complaints, as their matters would be covered by the overall complaint being made by the Society.
Law Society head of legal aid Richard Miller said:
'The Law Society has been tenacious in its pursuit of justice on this and we have been vindicated. The Society's complaints about the delay in the process have been upheld and the Ombudsman agreed that the LSC's communications with firms were inadequate.
'We are very pleased that solicitors who were affected by the maladministration now have a right to have their cases properly reconsidered. It is disappointing that it has taken five years to resolve, but at least the outcome is the correct one.'
Read the full apology from the LSC
Contacting the LSC
The LSC will accept representations from solicitors who can show that:
- they contacted the LSC or the Law Society about the 2006 exercise before 31 December 2008; and
- they were discouraged from pursuing the complaint by the Law Society, or were told by the LSC that they would be covered by any eventual settlement without needing to make a further complaint
Any solicitors who meet this criteria and wish to make representations should do so by emailing the LSC at ho.complaints@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk by 17:00 on 17 June 2013.