High Costs Changes
Earlier this month the Legal Aid Agency announced some procedural changes for high costs cases. The changes that have been introduced are summarised below.
Care Case Fee Schemes (CCFS)
From 1st December 2016 you no longer need to provide supporting documentation when initially submitting a case plan in an ongoing single counsel case. Instead any supporting documentation is only required at the final billing stage (at the conclusion of the case). Two new checklists have been created:
Interim Fast Checklist – this needs to be submitted with your CCFS form when you are submitting during an ongoing case (e.g. after registering as high costs).
Final FAST Checklist – this needs to be submitted with your final CCFS form for payment (within 3 months of the conclusion of the case).
The idea is to reduce delays in respect of case plan approvals and allow high cost contracts to be issued quicker. The also recognise that ‘the predicted courses of cases often change resulting in a change to the pricing model, meaning it is more sensible to scrutinise the CCFS form at the end of the case when all orders fee notes and vouchers are available’.
Both checklists are available here.
High Costs in CCMS
Two changes were introduced on the 8th December:
- You can now submit ‘payments on account’ in CCMS
Previously in a CCFS case in CCMS you could not create submit payments on account of profit costs and instead had to submit interim bills. You will now submit a payment on account which is quicker and means that no adjustments need to be made on final billing as any payments on account are automatically recouped on payment of the final bill.
- You can download high cost contracts within CCMS.
These documents will not be sent in the post so will need to be downloaded from CCMS, signed and uploaded in response to the notification.
Should you require any assistance with any high cost cases contact your regional office.
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