The announcement of the outcome of the tender process for immigration legal aid work has been further delayed, the Legal Services Commission said last week.

Firms were due to be notified last Friday whether they had been awarded new contracts to provide publicly funded work, but the LSC said that, as a general election had now been called, it was ‘currently checking with the Cabinet Office propriety guidance on whether we can communicate this information during the run up to the election’.

The deadline for submitting tenders closed on 28 January 2010 and applicants were initially supposed to have been informed of the result in March. The LSC delayed that announcement because it said the tender team was dealing with a large number of queries associated with the ongoing social welfare law and family bid rounds.

The LSC said it will update applicants once it has been given ‘further clarity’ on the issue.

Alison Harvey, general secretary of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, said: ‘The immigration bid round was brought forward contrary to the wishes of practitioners, who also expressed concern at the timescale for submitting bids. To now find delays in the process is very frustrating and disappointing.’

Mark Phillips, chairman of the Law Society’s immigration committee, said: ‘One may wonder what relevance the announcement is to the Cabinet Office – it’s difficult to see that this is a political issue.’

He added: ‘The contractual relationship we have with the LSC does not appear to have very much in terms of its obligations on them – they didn’t [even] pay us on time last month.’