The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has notified the Law Society that it will be delaying payments to solicitors due in March until the start of the next financial year in April. This is due to the 'cash position' in which the LSC finds itself due to obligations demanded of it by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). We have promptly:

• written to the main clearing banks alerting them to the problems that legal aid firms may face as a result of this

• written to the MoJ requesting that the payments are made on time

Mark Stobbs, Law Society director of policy, says:

'This appears to be a breach of the Prompt Payment Code - to which the MoJ is a signatory. The Society does not see any good reason why the profession should bear the burden of the LSC's poor financial management. It is bad enough that firms are not entitled to be paid for the work they do until a case has concluded, often months or even years later. To delay payments even further after that, for work that firms have done and are entitled to be paid for, solely for reasons of government cashflow, is at odds with a purported government policy of supporting small businesses and is completely unacceptable.'

He adds:
'It is not acceptable for government bodies to treat its suppliers in this arbitrary way and with less than a month's notice. I very much hope that the MOJ will agree and be able to insist that the LSC returns to the payment schedule that it had promised and should honour.'

An LSC spokesman has said that if the delay is likely to create serious financial problems for your firm, you should get in touch with your relationship manager at the LSC.