Legal aid firms are to be given a second chance to bid for civil contracts.
The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) has announced it will launch further opportunities to tender for 2018 face-to-face work by the end of June. It said it was thinking particularly about organisations that did not submit a tender or failed to submit compliant tenders. Contracts will be available for: family; housing, debt and welfare benefits; immigration and asylum; mental health; community care; claims against public authorities; clinical negligence; public law; and family mediation.
The LAA said it had ‘identified a number of organisations which wish to deliver civil legal aid but failed to submit compliant tenders in the category of law or procurement area in which they wish to deliver work’. Consequently, it wanted to give organisations a ‘further opportunity’.
For further comment on the tendering process for legal aid services, see 'Out of order' by Steve Hynes of the Legal Action Group.
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