Client and Case Management System (CCMS) – Inactive Case Review
Providers with identified cases will be contacted at the end of January and asked to give an update on the status of each case.
Inactive Cases Exercise
We will be contacting providers at the end of January to ask for status updates on civil legal aid certificates that are currently ongoing in our computer systems.
What is the exercise?
We are currently in the process of reviewing our records of cases across the Client and Case Management System (CCMS) and older civil systems to ensure that only live cases are active and that cases which are no longer live are confirmed as such and billed within a reasonable timeframe.
We know there can be a range of reasons why claims are not billed, but we also know there are cases that should have been billed that have not. Ensuring that only genuinely ongoing cases are live helps us to predict legal aid expenditure. This is of financial benefit to providers and ensures effective risk management from an LAA perspective.
To assist with ensuring our systems are as up to date as possible we are contacting providers to request status updates on open (in other words unbilled) civil legal aid certificates. There are approximately 170,000 live cases; however, we are focusing activity on a smaller number of cases which analysis shows as more likely to have completed.
Why these cases?
These are cases on which Payments on Account (POA) have been made and are flagged in our computer systems as being inactive. This means there has been no significant activity recorded in our case management systems in the past 12 months. Activity in this context means the submission of an Application, Amendment, Outcome, Bill (including POA or bill from counsel), provider transfer request, submission of a Very High Cost Case (VHCC) case plan, allocating costs to counsel or requesting a prior authority over the previous 365 days.
This is separate activity to any ongoing Unrecouped Payments on Account work that your firm may be involved in, and we have tried, where possible, to minimise duplication.
We have identified around 17,000 cases that we would like a status update on as they are showing as having no significant activity within the last 12 months. The majority of these cases are within CCMS, with a small number of older pre-CCMS certificates.
Separately, you will continue to receive regular updates from the LAA on all your open civil cases, listing all of your cases and which will include cases which are not in scope of this exercise.
What should I expect from LAA?
Any provider with at least one case in the list will be sent an email with a spreadsheet containing the case(s) on it and instructions on how to respond.
We are asking providers to select the appropriate option from the drop-down list and return the spreadsheet to us. This will let us know if a case is ongoing, to be billed or if it needs to be closed.
Where cases are not going to be billed, all providers will need to do is indicate the same in their response. The LAA will then take steps to close the case down and place it into archive. This process will also recoup any Payments on Account that are currently live on the case.
Why is the LAA undertaking this exercise?
LAA systems do not show the current stage of a set of proceedings covered by a legal aid certificate. We are working with Digital colleagues on a light-touch process which will allow providers to simply indicate on CCMS whether a case is ongoing or will be billed, however, we do not yet know when that change will be implemented.
Contact us
If you have any questions, please get in touch with your Contract Manager who will be able to assist.