The Legal Services Commission said it had ‘taken on board’ concerns from the profession in amendments it announced yesterday to its final proposals for the new civil contract and bid round.

The tendering process for the three-year contracts will begin in September. It will be run using a new e-tendering system, piloted in immigration tenders in Yorkshire and Humberside. All applications for the new contracts will only be accepted through the online facility.

The LSC said the process will benefit law firms by providing instant validation of data to help reduce errors in submissions, allow instant submission and provide a full audit trail and application history for future reference. It will also reduce the LSC’s administration costs, condensing two days’ work into 20 minutes.

In response to calls during the consultation process for greater flexibility in setting the minimum number of new cases that firms can apply for, the LSC has lowered the minimum number in family and social welfare law, and immigration and asylum. It will vary the threshold number in different procurement areas to take account of local issues.

The maximum number of cases that a firm can apply for has also been increased in some areas. To ensure firms have the capacity to undertake the work awarded, the number of cases given will depend on the number of people employed.

To help reduce the number of unrealistic bids, the LSC will introduce a key performance indicator requiring providers to deliver at least 85% of cases allocated.

The LSC will go ahead with the plan for single contracts to deliver debt, housing and welfare benefits, but it has relaxed the criteria for firms that only offer advice in one of those areas to develop consortia arrangements with other firms.

Providers will not need to merge with others, but only secure links with them to be able to provide the full service required by the LSC and the client.

Services for children and young people will be procured as a separate area of family work, in recognition of the specialist nature of the work. Aside from that the combinations of services that will be tendered for remain largely unchanged.

The criteria for distinguishing between bids where there are more bids than work on offer have yet to be announced. One option is to prefer those providers with a better supervisor-to-caseworker ratio.

LSC chief executive Carolyn Regan (pictured) said: ‘This is about moving towards more integrated services for clients.

‘We have had extensive discussions with representative bodies and they tell us we have taken on board their suggestions.

‘Securing access to justice for legal aid clients remains our priority. The services we will procure under the new civil contract represent a significant step towards ensuring that we commission services that people need where they most need them.’

Richard Miller, Law Society legal aid manager, said: ‘While there have been a number of sensible adjustments to the proposals in the light of comments we have made in previous discussions with the LSC, for example, on minimum matter starts, specialist children contracts and the allocation of work within geographically large procurement areas, there remain important issues we have serious concerns with in these plans.’

He said important questions remained unanswered and the Society was calling for further urgent talks with the LSC.

‘In relation to the criteria for determining who does and does not get a contract for civil work, the proposed criteria for ranking bids are unlikely to separate bidders and will be difficult to rank objectively,’ he said. ‘If the LSC gets this wrong there is a significant risk that a firm that is refused a contract could mount a successful legal challenge. That situation will be in nobody's interest.’

For the full consultation response go: https://consult.legalservices.gov.uk/inovem/gf2.ti/f/137474/2789765.1/pdf/-/Consultresp_FINAL_.pdf