Crime news: launch of ‘crime billing online’ pilot
Solicitor advocate firms and chambers to take part in trial
A combination of large and small solicitor advocate firms and chambers are being brought together into a team to help us test the submission of Crown Court bills online.
The Crime Billing Online (CBO) project is part of our Crime Change programme.
It is intended to deliver a working prototype of the new system by the end of April 2015.
The ultimate aim is to enable both providers and advocates to submit Crown Court bills online.
Benefits will include:
- submitting full Crown Court bills via an online portal
- reducing postal/dx and printing costs
- improving internal casework processes in terms of organising work and reducing paper correspondence
- improving assurance control providing an online audit-trail of claims submitted
What is the CBO project pilot and how will it be delivered?
We already have a lot of feedback about how users tell us they would like crown court billing to work. This will feed into the work of our project team as they test the software and see what improvements can be made.
The pilot aims to deliver:
- the ability for advocates to submit full Crown Court bills online, including any evidence submission
- improved internal casework processes for organising our work
This will address the biggest issue with the current AGFS billing process, namely the volume of paper involved.
Longer term aims?
Over the long term, the project aims to reduce the amount of paper used in the billing process and enable:
- providers and advocates to submit all AGFS and LGFS bills online
- the bulk upload of AGFS and LGFS bills
- our portal to work with provider and advocate software billing systems
Further information
Criminal legal aid processing: applications and digital systems