Civil news: CCMS and payments on account
Client and Cost Management System (CCMS) ledger requirements for ‘profit-cost’ payments on account (POA).
In order to support your profit-cost POA on CCMS, you need to submit a copy of the ledger, i.e. full details of the case running costs incurred to date.
We need you to provide this evidence of the costs incurred so we can check that we are making the correct payments and comply with National Audit Office recommendations.
This is something we are gradually introducing and is, as yet, not required for non-CCMS cases.
Up to 75% profit-cost payment
As a legal aid provider, you will still only get paid up to 75% of profit-costs.
You have asked us if CCMS identifies if a provider is claiming more than 75% of the costs.
We can confirm that providers using CCMS will be asked to enter 100% of the profit costs incurred to date.
The system then calculates 75% of the costs and the caseworker (not CCMS) will check the POA value against the supporting evidence.
Related to this, you have also asked us – for fixed fee cases – if you’ll receive 75% of the actual costs or the fixed fee.
We can confirm that the costs paid are calculated in the same way as currently.
Other things that haven’t changed
The POA payment rules are the same, i.e. you can only submit 2 profit-cost POAs every 12 months.
The disbursement POA process also remains the same.