The LAA will shortly roll out a new report to all legal aid contract holders setting out key information about contract performance.  The LAA announcement about the new Provider Activity Report follows:

Civil/crime news: rollout of contract performance reports

‘Provider Activity Reports’ (PARs) showing key contract data and highlighting performance against contractual requirements are to be emailed to all providers quarterly from January 2018.

What do the reports show?

The Provider Activity Report (PAR) contains a wealth of key information about Contractual performance. Some examples include:

  • Defence Solicitor Call Centre acceptance rates
  • rejects for claims submitted
  • reconciliation statistics for standard and variable monthly payments

Why are you doing this now?

Providers should already be familiar with these reports / contents through discussions with their contract manager. PARs are important to how we manage contracts. We want to be transparent about the information we hold and give providers the opportunity to review and monitor changes in performance using the same information that we hold.

We have been piloting the reports with providers in Bristol and London for the last few months and have listened to feedback, using this to refine the reports and our approach to sharing them.

Pilot outcome

PARs were sent successfully to approx 800 providers during August and September.

Feedback focused on improvements to usability of the report (increasing font size, removing excess pages, using blanks rather than 0s for example). The reports have been refined based on the feedback and are now more user friendly. We have also improved the guidance that sits alongside PAR and Contract Manager’s will be able to answer more detailed questions or address concerns at annual visits.

Timescales and next steps

All providers will be sent their PAR via email in January 2018 and quarterly thereafter.

Who will you contact?

We plan to email the designated primary contact email address we hold for your office in Contracted Work and Administration (CWA).

How can I check you have the right email address?

You can check the designated primary contact email address we hold for you by going into the CWA system There is a user guide on GOV.UK which sets out how to check and amend this information – see below.

Further information

CWA detailed user guides – download ‘CWA user guide admin’ and see page 7 ‘Primary Contacts’

See the LAA’s guidance note here and an example PAR here.