Policy
25 June, 2009
LSC to take new approach to quality
Legal providers to be subject to new scheme from 2010
The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has published details of the new quality assurance scheme for legal aid providers that will be introduced in April 2010, with the changes coming into full effect by 2013.
The LSC says that it intends to allow providers to select between either an updated Specialist Quality Mark (SQM) or the Law Society's Lexcel Practice Management Standard in order to measure quality assurance. The SQM will not have specific requirements about each area of law as it does at present. These will be included in the LSC contract. Whichever system a provider adopts the LSC expects that the new processes 'will continue to provide assurance for clients that legal aid services are well run and capable of delivering high quality'.
Peer review will remain a part of the LSC's approach to measuring quality but will in future not be incorporated in the process of bidding for work but 'will be used on a risk-based and random sampling basis' as the Commission considers that 'continuing to review all contracts would represent an unjustified burden on providers' and 'poor value for money' as out of over 2,300 reviews carried out since 2005 only three resulted in a score below four. The LSC may, however, continue to focus peer review where it is developing new approaches to contracting, or contracting for highly specialised services.
The Commission intends to outsource auditing of the updated SQM to external providers from Autumn 2010 and has produced a discussion paper outlining its proposals and carried out an Equality Impact Assessment. It is asking for comments on both the discussion paper and assessment by 30 July 2009. The LSC says that legal aid providers will be charged for audits but it intends to 'minimise costs'.
More information on A new approach to quality assurance including details of the Quality in Legal Aid: SQM Outsourcing discussion paper and Equality Impact Assessment are available on the LSC's website.
