LAA Data Breach - Contingency Payments and Billing

Due to the cyber-attack upon the LAA’s digital services they are now invoking contingency arrangements for payments whilst the portal is unavailable.

The contingency arrangements will allow for you to opt in to receive a temporary average payment for Civil Representation work. The average will be calculated by the LAA based on a 3-month average and will include POAS, Bills and VAT. The contingency payment transaction will appear on your BACs statement as ‘CR_CON_BILL’. You can request to claim less than the average payment, and should you wish to do so you are to state the amount you wish to claim instead within your opt in email.

The contingency process is voluntary on a weekly basis, and to opt in, you must let the LAA know before midday each Monday via email - CivilClaimBC@justice.gov.uk. A declaration form must also be signed by your compliance officer. The declaration form can be accessed via this link https://www.gov.uk/guidance/legal-aid-agency-cyber-security-incident.

Important

It is imperative that you continue to have your CCMS claims prepared during this time and that the same are submitted expeditiously once the system is restored. Please note opting in will ensure the firms cashflow in order to meet all creditor demands during this period, but it is extremely important that you are in a position to submit your bills once CCMS is online, so as not to negatively impact your cash flow once the interim payments stop and the recoupment process begins.

Payments under the contingency arrangements are not final payments. The payments will not be made under a specific case reference and do not replace the need to submit a Bill on CCMS, once available.

Monies paid under the contingency process will be recouped via a Debit Note transaction upon systems having been restored. After 2 weeks the LAA will start to recoup a quarter of the contingency payments for each week until the full amount has been recouped.

During the outage you must keep records of Bills which were due to be submitted as evidence of work in progress to cover the contingency payment, and they must be available for audit/request by the LAA. You are obligated to evidence that claims submitted for this period would have equalled or exceeded the Contingency Payment applied for. If you do not have sufficient Bills prepared to justify the weekly payment, you must not opt in.

Should you have any billing related queries please do not hesitate to contact us on 0370 300 3780.