Advice for Life, a charity which ran Cambridge Law Centre and Huntingdon Law Centre, has gone into liquidation. As a result, both Law Centres have closed.
The Law Centres Federation (LCF), which represents the 56 Law Centres in England and Wales, is very concerned about the impact that the loss of these Law Centres will have on local people, particularly at a time of economic recession.
For this reason, LCF and a neighbouring Law Centre have offered their assistance to the liquidator to ensure that vulnerable local people continue to get the legal help they need.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
LSC announces final plans for civil contract bids
Solicitors, not-for-profit (NFP) agencies and other legal aid providers will be allowed to form consortia to bid for civil contracts, according to the Legal Services Commission’s (LSC’s) plans for civil legal aid announced in June. However, standalone contracts in housing will not be allowed and this will hit some specialist firms and NFP agencies. Housing firms will have the option of providing family work as well or joining with other providers that undertake debt and welfare benefits work (see 'Civil concerns').
The LSC has split the country into 134 procurement areas covering family and social welfare law, and designated as Integrated Services A and Integrated Services B areas. ‘A’ areas tend to be relatively well-served urban areas in which the LSC will expect contracting organisations to have integrated services. In a move that will cause problems for some firms, those undertaking family work in ‘A’ areas will have to provide both public law children and other family law services to qualify for a contract. There will be variable levels of case starts set to allow for those areas where there is not a great demand for services or in those categories of law in which there are low volumes of cases. Details of the procurement areas, along with a question and answer forum to deal with potential bidders’ enquiries, have been published on the LSC’s website.
Successful bidders will be expected to take up at least 85 per cent of the matter starts allocated to them; the LSC hopes that this will discourage organisations from overbidding. LAG understands that the LSC will announce the criteria which will be used to select between bidders if there are more of them than contracts for work in any of the procurement areas.
At a press conference to announce the plans, Carolyn Regan, the LSC’s chief executive, said: ‘We want to maintain standards and quality without pushing everyone down the merger route.’ However, Nicola Mackintosh, a partner at Mackintosh Duncan, said: ‘The concerns of the LSC about clients experiencing referral fatigue are much better addressed through supporting suppliers to develop more effective referral systems and addressing the serious dearth of suppliers to whom potential clients can be referred, rather than devising an extremely complex and costly system of commissioning through consortia bids.’
It is unclear whether or not the LSC will seek to pilot best value tendering (BVT) for civil legal aid work. Derek Hill, director of policy at the LSC, said: ‘It is something we would like to do, but we have no definite plans.’ He confirmed that the decision rests with the Ministry of Justice. The LSC has left itself the option of announcing two or three pilot areas next month. Suppliers in these areas would get only a short-term contract before the process of allocating Legal Help work became open to BVT.
Civil bid rounds for 2010 contracts: a consultation response and the other documents referred to in this news piece are available at: https://consult.legalservices.gov.uk/inovem/consult.ti/2010Contracts/listdocuments.
The LSC has split the country into 134 procurement areas covering family and social welfare law, and designated as Integrated Services A and Integrated Services B areas. ‘A’ areas tend to be relatively well-served urban areas in which the LSC will expect contracting organisations to have integrated services. In a move that will cause problems for some firms, those undertaking family work in ‘A’ areas will have to provide both public law children and other family law services to qualify for a contract. There will be variable levels of case starts set to allow for those areas where there is not a great demand for services or in those categories of law in which there are low volumes of cases. Details of the procurement areas, along with a question and answer forum to deal with potential bidders’ enquiries, have been published on the LSC’s website.
Successful bidders will be expected to take up at least 85 per cent of the matter starts allocated to them; the LSC hopes that this will discourage organisations from overbidding. LAG understands that the LSC will announce the criteria which will be used to select between bidders if there are more of them than contracts for work in any of the procurement areas.
At a press conference to announce the plans, Carolyn Regan, the LSC’s chief executive, said: ‘We want to maintain standards and quality without pushing everyone down the merger route.’ However, Nicola Mackintosh, a partner at Mackintosh Duncan, said: ‘The concerns of the LSC about clients experiencing referral fatigue are much better addressed through supporting suppliers to develop more effective referral systems and addressing the serious dearth of suppliers to whom potential clients can be referred, rather than devising an extremely complex and costly system of commissioning through consortia bids.’
It is unclear whether or not the LSC will seek to pilot best value tendering (BVT) for civil legal aid work. Derek Hill, director of policy at the LSC, said: ‘It is something we would like to do, but we have no definite plans.’ He confirmed that the decision rests with the Ministry of Justice. The LSC has left itself the option of announcing two or three pilot areas next month. Suppliers in these areas would get only a short-term contract before the process of allocating Legal Help work became open to BVT.
Civil bid rounds for 2010 contracts: a consultation response and the other documents referred to in this news piece are available at: https://consult.legalservices.gov.uk/inovem/consult.ti/2010Contracts/listdocuments.
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