The Legal Services Commission has blamed ‘data corruption issues’ for errors in the duty solicitor rotas published last week. Following publication of the new rotas for the six-month slots running from July to December, firms across the country found themselves on rotas in the wrong areas, or missed off the correct rotas, while some police station areas were not included at all.

Paul Harris, chairman of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, said the error had caused ‘panic and uncertainty, and a lot of bad feeling within the profession’.

Roy Morgan, chairman of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said that firms could lose months of work if left off the rota.

An LSC spokesperson said the problem was not caused by the LSC’s IT systems but by ‘data corruption issues’. He said the duty membership lists had been checked and revised in light of information provided by solicitors and that the LSC would publish finalised new rotas ‘soon’.