An issue has arisen with CRM5 applications. I would like to speak to a few people who deal with this kind of work at a few different firms about the issue before I take it further with the LAA. The short issue is that the LAA has started saying that time for preparing CRM5s is administrative and not the same as time for preparing a CRM4 in a criminal matter (which is allowed). Consequently, they say it is not remunerable. We have never had this problem before now and, on all audits over a number of years, the time for preparing CRM5s has been allowed as long as it is reasonable (between 12 and 24 minutes usually).

If you deal with this kind of work and can confirm that payment for time spent preparing CRM5s has routinely been allowed by the LAA, please can you contact me off this group on s.bird@birds.eu.com and put CRM5 in the subject header. Equally if you have had this issue with the LAA before, please also get in touch.

It may be a small issue on the face of it but I want to challenge the LAA on this as it affects most cases and, given how bad the funding is for this work, we cannot let anything go unchallenged (as long as I am right about it, of course).

Steven Bird | Managing Director

Birds Solicitors

61 Wandsworth High Street | Wandsworth | London | SW18 2PT

T: 020 8874 7433 | DDI: 020 3657 7260 | F: 020 8870 4770 

E: s.bird@birds.eu.com  | W: www.birds.eu.com

CJSM: steven.bird@birds.cjsm.net

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