News story: Civil news: tips to help you when submitting VHCC family work

You can prevent delays to Very High Cost Case family work by making sure you avoid a few common mistakes.

We have checked through correspondence received by the VHCC family team in recent weeks and believe the following tips could help you avoid unnecessary delays.

Avoid sending documents by both email and DX

This often causes confusion and additional work for the team, meaning that it takes longer for them to issue a response.

Unless otherwise requested choose just one way of sending documents i.e. email or DX.

Download and use the template to register a VHCC case

As you work through the registration template remember that the VHCC team requires the following:

certificate reference numbers
number of hearing days and advocate meetings to date
number of future hearing days/advocate meetings
date of final hearing (if known)
full breakdown of costs to date

If information is missing the VHCC team will need to ask for additional information, which will mean delays. A link to the page hosting the template is available below.

Use correct process for enquiries

Enquiries about cases managed within CCMS need to be dealt with in the CCMS environment. Non-CCMS cases enquiries can be dealt with by emailing: vhcc.queries@legalaid.gsi.gov.uk

Avoid emailing caseworkers directly as this can cause unnecessary delays.

Further information

Family high cost cases – scroll down to ‘when a case becomes high cost’ for link to ‘email template’ to help you register your VHCC case