24 May 2012
Chaotic
start for company that clinched multimillion pound deal to provide translators
for courts and inquests
The company that clinched the multimillion pound deal to provide
translators for courts and inquests is being monitored daily after a chaotic
start to its contract, the Ministry of Justice said today.
Applied Language Solutions (ALS) has come under fire after repeated
complaints about interpreters failing to turn up and money wasted through court
delays and cancellations.
There have also been several farcical moments, including a judge
ordering a retrial of a burglary prosecution after a Romanian interpreter
confused the words “beaten” and “bitten”.
ALS was set a 98 per cent success rate by the MoJ, which was defined by
a translator turning up to a job and completing it.
According to MoJ figures today, it had achieved 65 per cent in February,
82 per cent in March and 90 per cent in April.
ALS was founded in 2003 by Gavin Wheeldon, who launched the company out
of his back bedroom. He appeared on BBC2’s Dragon’s Den, unsuccessfully
attempting to persuade its entrepreneurs to invest in his firm. Despite that
setback, it now has 130 full-time staff and an annual turnover of more than
£10m.
When it won the contract, it argued that it would cut the £60m yearly
cost of providing translators by one-third.
An MoJ spokesman said yesterday: “We continue to monitor performance on
a daily basis.
“However, the contract is now delivering an effective service and we
expect to see improvements in the coming months.”
He added: “There are now only a tiny handful of cases each day when an
interpreter job is unfilled. Disruption to court business and complaints have
reduced substantially.”
Over the three-month period ALS received 26,059 requests for translators
covering 142 languages. Four languages accounted for more than a third of
requests: Polish, Romanian, Urdu and Lithuanian.
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