The Legal Services Commission did not intend the outcome of the recent family tender which saw a 46% fall in the number of providers, its chief executive told the Gazette this week in her first press interview since her appointment.

Carolyn Downs (pictured), a career civil servant who took over the reins as LSC chief executive in March, said the job has been the ‘most challenging’ role she has ever undertaken.

Downs said she was used to challenge and criticism, but had been surprised by the attitudes she had encountered, ‘where it would appear to be acceptable for people to talk to each other in a really rather adversarial, aggressive and inappropriate fashion’.

She said providers and the LSC needed to ‘engage more constructively and more openly’, but added ‘it is very difficult to have open and engaged discussions with people who are constantly threatening to sue you’.

The recent civil tender exercises resulted in large numbers of firms losing contracts, and have prompted individuals and representative groups, including the Law Society, to take advice on legal challenges to the process.

Overall, Downs said the LSC had achieved its aim of re-tendering the civil and criminal contracts on a ‘very tight timescale’ to ensure a ‘quality and sustainable provider base from October 2010’. However, she accepted that issues had arisen that had caused providers concern.

On the family tender, which resulted in around 46% of firms that bid failing to get contracts, she said: ‘I do not believe that was the stated intention of the LSC going into the tender process’.

But Downs said providers had requested higher levels of quality criteria to be incorporated into the bidding process, which the LSC had done, and that was the reason why so many firms had not been successful.

Carol Storer, director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, said: ‘Carolyn has come into the LSC at a time when providers are at their wits’ end. When they feel negotiation has failed, lawyers will naturally look to litigation as the next step.’

Storer accepted that the LSC had tried to incorporate quality into the bidding process, but said the criteria were not ‘targeted’, which meant ‘lots of excellent providers didn’t get contracts’.

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