Validation of Tolerance Claims
News has reached us of yet another LSC fixed fee clawback initiative.
We have said before that the LSC is deep financial straits and desperate
to recover monies by whatever means necessary. The focus on the
Family Private Law Fixed Fee Scheme was the first stage. Now we
have Tolerance claims in the frame.
 In
essence, large numbers of firms have been unwittingly claiming contract
fixed fees instead of tolerance fixed fees for their tolerance work.
The LSC has identified all the firms/claims affected and has written
to them identifying the errors. If they hear nothing back from the
firms they will clawback the difference in fees, which amounts to
about £20-£40 a case.
Whilst it is right that the LSC shouldn't pay out for cases wrongly
claimed and is within its rights to take back the money, it does
highlight the shambolic nature of LSC Online. Anyone who has used
this system will know how easy it is to claim at contract rates
for tolerance work as you need to remember to set the Tolerance
Indicator appropriately.
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Surely there must be a better way?
Our criticism of the (award-winning) LSC Online system knows no
bounds and it is quite difficult to pass comment without resorting
to bad language. However, it is in examples like this that one realises
the true incompetence of the system.
The LSC's systems obviously must know which suppliers have which
contracts and therefore which cases are tolerence. Why, therefore
does it need the supplier to indicate which is a tolerance matter
and so introduce human error into the process?
Furthermore, the system, before you submit your claim goes through
some sort of validation and tells you everything is ok. Why then
does it not validate whether a claim is tolerance? What the hell
is it doing?
Frankly, it is little surprise that the LSC's own costs are rising
when its costs control systems seem to be based on allowing firms
to make errors then spending a fortune on bureaucrats to identify
where the errors have occurred then clawing the monies back.
Given that the LSC has spent many man-years on LSC Online this
lack of functionality is quite galling.
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