The Legal Services Commission has announced that the very high cost cases (VHCC) panel for criminal work will be ­suspended when the current contracts expire in July, because of a lack of time to run a new tendering exercise.

From July 2010 the LSC said it will put in place a set of individual case contracting arrangements that will operate until new arrangements are worked out.

Firms in possession of a case likely to be a VHCC will still be required to notify the LSC. If the LSC classifies the case as a VHCC the firm will be ­permitted to act on it only if it ­satisfies eligibility criteria which have yet to be confirmed, but will be based predominantly on experience.

An LSC consultation on the future VHCC scheme closed last month. It said the new VHCC contracting arrangements have been postponed to allow sufficient time to consider responses to a closely linked consultation from the Ministry of Justice on advocates’ graduated fees (extended for four weeks to 1 April).

The application process for any new VHCC scheme is still to be decided, but an LSC spokesman said: ‘We are keen to explore ways in which current VHCC panel members are not asked to provide the same information as they did for the 2007 panel tendering exercise.’

The Law Society’s head of legal aid Richard Miller said: ‘It’s a pragmatic approach given where we are now, but we’d like to see the details of how cases will be dealt with.’

The chairman of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, Ian Kelcey, said: ‘No one really knows what is going to happen. It’s the usual state of unpreparedness of the LSC, which is living up to the reputation that it is not fit for purpose.’

He added: ‘We’d like to see either the panels scrapped altogether or a recognition that those who do VHCC work do all other criminal work too, and are not allowed to cherry pick as they can now.’