The Legal Services Commission has announced the revised dates that tendering for the new civil contracts for legal aid work will open, but the Law Society has warned that problems must still be addressed before the tenders begin.

Bid rounds for social welfare law and family services work will commence in the week beginning 22 February, while tenders for mental health work will open in the week beginning 8 February. The bidding exercises for other low-volume categories will start in early March.

LSC chief executive Carolyn Regan said the dates had been put back so that its procurement plans could take into account the most up-to-date data. The plans, which indicate the volumes of work the LSC predicts will be available in each category in the different procurement areas, will be published in the week commencing 25 January.

Responding to a letter sent last week by the Law Society’s chief executive Desmond Hudson, Regan said: ‘We do appreciate that providers need some certainty to be able to plan for these tender exercises and we are currently reviewing how we may be able to simplify the tender process.’

In a second letter sent to Regan this week, Hudson said concerns remained about the decision-making process for awarding contracts in housing, debt and welfare benefits work, and the allocation of new matter starts, as the process allowed for ‘irrational’ outcomes.

‘These problems are not the result of any recent developments in the tendering process. They arise inevitably from the decision that these categories of law will only be tendered together as a bundle,’ Hudson said. ‘That decision was taken over a year ago and it is a matter of some surprise that satisfactory solutions to these problems have still not been published.’In his earlier letter, Hudson asked for clarification on how the LSC will compare bids in the combined social welfare law categories of debt, housing and welfare benefits, and how it would ensure matter starts were allocated to successful bidders in proportion to the available work for the three categories.

Regan said full details on how the joint tenders would work will be published when the tender opens, and the allocation of matter starts between the categories would be set out in the revised procurement plans.