Legal aid procurement – 2013+ contracts

Thanks to Phil Jew of AdviceUK, who has shared this information about future legal aid procurement, following the passing of the Legal Aid Act. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has issued an “Outline of tender process” document, available here: Outline of tender process

This is a brief note of information that AdviceUK has obtained regarding the future approach of the LSC to procurement of what is left of legal aid. This note was written before the above outline of tender process was published so it does repeat some if it, but it also contains some additional information, gleaned from discussions that advice networks have had with LSC.

The LSC’s tendering process will begin with the publishing of a Pre-qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) on 21st May 2012 for the following types of contract:

• Face to face (F2F) Housing and debt – Though it is not clear if you have to bid for both together and whether you need an ‘authorised litigator’
• F2F Family
• F2F Asylum and residual non-asylum work
• Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme – in about 35 areas
• Mediation
• Telephone advice in Housing & Debt, Discrimination, Education (SEN) and Family.

Submitting a PQQ does not commit you to a full tender to deliver.

The existing operator service will operate the mandatory telephone gateway. It will be evaluated before a tendering process for the contract to deliver from possibly 2014 onwards. The telephone Invitation to Tender (ITT) will be published in August. Those that pass the PQQ stage will be invited to submit a tender within four weeks of publication. The outcome will be announced in November. F2F ITTs will come out in September, again with a four week deadline. Outcomes will be announced in January 2013.

The tendering process for F2F contracts will be based on lots – every bidder that meets a quality threshold will be offered a contract/New Matter Start (NMS). The threshold will include holding Specialist Quality Mark or Lexcel and having a qualified superviser with 1:4 supervisor - caseworker ratio.

The process for allocating NMS to successful bidders is not clear. LSC say that most applicants will be awarded the volume of work they bid for, but that applicants bidding in the largest lot will only be guaranteed a minimum volume of work. LSC has not said whether they will stick to the current procurement areas (PA). If they do,  the cuts to scope and eligibility mean there will not be much work to go round in each PA.

Taking the example of housing to illustrate: LSC has said £21m will be available for this work. This equates to £156,700 per PA, 110,000 NMS in total and 825 NMS per PA on average (not allowing for any exceptional cases and using current fixed fees). So you may well be bidding for a share of not much work at all and this will give rise to questions of sustainability. LSC has not said whether consortia bids will be permitted.

The tendering process for telephone services will ‘use award criteria and price competition’ with applicants bidding on the basis of hourly rates. Experience in Criminal police station contracts is that such a process could lead to the price being very low or zero. Bidders offer to run the service for nothing with the aim of generating certificated legal aid work from the calls.

Article from new Legal Voice website, covering the new tender process. This introductory article deals with what is being tendered, how and when. It also queries whether the process may be the subject of a legal challenge by a new entrant.

Barring any last minute hiccups, the Legal Services Commission is due to open the Bravo eTendering Portal on 21 May order to tender for new civil contracts.

New LSC Tender