Civil and Crime Bid Rounds announced

The LSC has announced its timetable for the tenders of the new 2010 civil and criminal legal aid contracts.

Civil
Current contracts will come to an end on 30 September 2010 following the postponement announced in July where the LSC extended the current Civil Contracts for six months. The new civil legal aid contract will come into effect on 1 October 2010.

In order to be able to carry out any new civil legal aid work from October 2010, organisations will need to bid for a new contract. The bid round for all civil work (other than Immigration) is planned for the week beginning 8 February 2010.

When the bid rounds open, information for applicants and details of how to apply will be available on the tender pages of the LSC website. The bid round will be open for a period of seven weeks.

Crime
The tender for crime contracts in Best Value Tendering pilot areas is planned to begin in the week commencing 4 January 2010 – with the tender for non-BVT contracts starting a week later.

Both will be open for a period of four weeks. The auction stage of the BVT application process is due to take place in March 2010, with face to face training by the auction provider for applicants invited to this stage scheduled for February.

The new criminal legal aid contract comes into effect in July 2010.

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Questions, questions...
Well, we have the dates so let's not carp for the sake of it. However, the previous timetable for the Civil bid round was ridiculously tight potentially allowing firms a week to study the tender documents before bidding. This is no way to run the system.

It remains to be seen what will happen this time but the LSC has left itself so much to do that we would not be surprised to see the bid documentation again relaeased far too late in the day.

Much of the tender process still remains opaque such as KPI for 2010 contracts, selection criteria, how they will deal with over-bidding, consortia arrangements. The LSC needs to realise that the devil is in the detail on these issues and can be the difference between success and failure for suppliers.