LSC misses targets

In what was a “challenging year” the Legal Services Commission (LSC) achieved only 22 out of 35 key performance indicators, according to its annual report.

The report says that legal aid had funded more than 2.5m cases in the past year and maintained 100% coverage of the duty solicitor schemes. However, the report states that providers had failed to achieve targets in ensuring that all crime contracts had a peer review or quality assessment by 31 March this year and had not increased their satisfaction score by the target of 5%.

It was also reported that fixed fees for advocates, solicitors and counsel had not been introduced by April 2008 and that delays had affected the introduction of other fixed fee schemes.

The annual review did make clear, however, that the LSC had met its target of operating within the overall fund allocation for the year.