Press Releases pre-May 2010

The future of legal aid will be more secure as a result of changes announced today - part of a programme of reforms designed to make legal aid sustainable, efficient and fair.   

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) set out plans to test best value tendering (BVT) for defence work carried out by solicitors in police stations and magistrates' courts in two pilot areas - Greater Manchester and Avon and Somerset. The pilots, which will start in July 2010, will be fully evaluated. If successful, BVT will not be introduced in all other areas of England and Wales before 2013 - a longer evaluation period than LSC committed on.   

Following extensive consultation the LSC has modified many of its plans for best value tendering. It has:   

• Maintained and improved quality requirements for all firms who take part in tendering and quality requirements for delivery of service throughout the contract
• Introduced a variable cap on an individual firm's market share - so that firms have greater freedom to bid for higher volumes of work
• Introduced a 10% tolerance quota for 'own client' work - so that BVT firms can work on 'own client' cases outside their home area
• Accepted the online bidding system for tendering that the majority of firms said they preferred
• Decided that BVT contract holders should have exclusive rights to work in magistrates' courts to further protect their access to cases.

The Legal Aid Minister, Lord Bach, said: "The changes being proposed today are designed to help safeguard the future of legal aid in years to come. Best value tendering has the potential to secure high quality criminal legal aid services, best value for taxpayers and a fair deal for providers.

"Throughout our careful and thorough consultation process we have been listening to the profession and have responded to many of their concerns through the final proposals put forward today. We have also extended the timetable so that national roll-out will not happen before 2013."

Carolyn Regan, Chief Executive of the Legal Services Commission, said: "Our aim is to keep within our budget and make it sustainable, so while we recognise that solicitors say they do not want best value tendering, we believe it is the right way forward to pilot these proposals and evaluate their impact. We have made a number of other changes in response to suggestions and addressing providers' key concerns. We will work with them to make it a success."

Full details of the consultation response is on our website.

Media information:

Daniel Kellingley on 020 7783 7220

Editor’s notes:

• The full best value tendering consultation response can be found at CDS > Crime consultations > Best Value Tendering for CDS contracts 2010 
• The best value tendering consultation was conducted over 3 months from 27 March to 19 June 2009. It received 1503 written responses. In addition over 1100 lawyers attended 55 consultation events across England and Wales.
• The sixtieth anniversary of the introduction of Legal Aid takes place on 30th July 2009. See the legal aid 60 website for more details.