Resolution PPC Forum 08 May 2070

On Monday, 8 May 2017 I attended the resolution PPC forum in London. A PPC is a Professional Practice Consultant. Essentially this is a mediators supervisor. I am a PPC and supervise other mediators. I also have my own PPC.

Every year the family solicitors organisation: Resolution hold a meeting in London – the PPC forum – to update Resolution PPC’s on developments in the mediation world. It is also a good opportunity to catch up with some old friends.

The world of mediation is quite small. There are only 1000 mediators registered with The Family Mediation Council – there were around 1200 last year. There are only 707 accredited mediators.

This year we heard a presentation from Robert This year we heard a presentation from Robert Creighton of the Family Mediation Standards Board. We also discussed the possibility of a new code of conduct for PPC’s.

Another topic of interest was legal aid contracts. The tendering process for legal aid contracts for mediation from 2018 has been delayed by the general election. However, during the session devoted to legal aid a number of mediation services confirmed that they have given up their legal aid contracts already or have no intention of bidding for new legal aid contracts. It was also noted that the amount of legally aided mediation has reduced because of changes and sometimes lack of changes to the legal aid means test.

We have noticed an increase in the number of mediation referrals that we have received this year – but less there are less clients who get through the means test to qualify for legal aid than there would have been a couple of years ago.

It is our intention to continue to offer a legally aided mediation service. We are the only mediation service that is based in East Devon – in Honiton and we are regularly seeing mediation clients in Taunton.

If you are interested in finding out about family mediation then please let us know. We also offer an innovative scheme which combines mediation with arbitration