Lawyers have expressed concerns about government proposals for a price competitive tendering process to consolidate provision of help to people facing eviction.
Under the proposals, contained in the Legal Aid Agency’s Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme consultation, due to end on 17 March, law firms will have to bid for contracts on the basis of price and quality. Fewer but larger contracts will be available.
Currently, firms have contracts for each individual court, providing emergency advice and advocacy to anyone facing possession proceedings. However, about half of the current schemes have only small volumes of work and some firms have withdrawn, leaving gaps in access.
If it goes ahead, the number of schemes will reduce from 117 to 48 by April 2018.
Lawyers have raised concerns. Carol Storer, director, Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said: “We remain worried about the effect on quality, that organisations who do this work now and do it well may be replaced by organisations that don’t.
“People will feel under pressure to bid lower than the fees they get now, to make sure they get the work, and if they bid too low then they may not be able to continue. We worry that people will underbid and then not be able to deliver the contracts. As most of the new contracts cover more than one court for the first time and some as many as seven, services will probably be more expensive to deliver. We don’t think that there will be economies of scale, this undermines the stated intention to make these schemes commercially viable.
Writing in NLJ this week, Steve Hynes, director, Legal Action Group, says he fears not-for-profit organisations could be badly hit if the plans go ahead since more than half of the current providers are from that sector.
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