In brief: LAB rapped over correspondence handling

The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Sir William Reid, has criticised the Legal Aid Board's handling of correspondence. Referring to a complaint that the LAB was evasive and dishonest in its handling of solicitors' correspondence, he said last week: "Delays occurred in associating letters with the file and in replying to correspondence, and points raised by the solicitors, were not answered in sufficient detail." But he rejected the notion that the LAB acted dishonestly: "Although there were inadequacies in LAB's performance, I found no evidence that they were deliberately evasive or dishonourable in their conduct."