Immigration legal advice services

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Immigration Removal Centre advice bid round terminated

10 March 2009

In July 2008 we ran two procurement exercises for immigration services:

Immigration Removal Centre Advice

Regrettably we have terminated without an award our invitation to tender for the delivery of services individuals detained at Immigration Removal Centres (IRC).  We have written to all organisations affected by this decision.

Next steps

We recognise that we will need to continue to commission these types of services and are considering how we can best do this alongside the tender process to replace the current Unified Contract (Civil) which is due to expire on 31 March 2010. 

Police station Advice

The tender process for the award of new contracts, for the provision of Immigration Telephone Advice to individuals detained at Police Stations, concluded last year.  

There were four successful bidders and the new contracts began in November 2008.

The providers are:

All successful bidders demonstrated a very high level of skill and experience, in providing the necessary Immigration advice to these vulnerable clients, and we are very confident that they will continue to set the highest standards in this vital area of work.

Update 15 December 08: the invitation to tender for Immigration advice to individuals detained at Removal Centres

On 22 July 2008 we published on our website tender documentation for the delivery of immigration advice to individuals detained at Removal Centres.    

69 Organisations submitted 259 individual tenders across all 9 Removal Centres.

Following the assessment of all the tenders, 10 organisations were notified that their tender(s) best met the requirements of the tender process, however the final outcome would not be confirmed until any appeals had been considered. 

Some bidders appealed on the basis that they scored lower on the Selection Criteria than applicants who had been ranked highest on the Selection Criteria.  The Legal Director’s representative considered that clarification of some detail in these bids was required in order to consider the appeals properly. These bidders (and the 10 organisations mentioned above) were invited to provide further information to clarify the detail of their tender(s).  

Next step

When we have dealt with the appeals, we will consider whether any of the scoring of these bids should be changed. If so, tenders at each Removal Centre will be ranked again. Consequently, it may be that there are changes in the rankings of tenders, which may affect the final outcome of this process.
 

Update 30 October 08: outcome of Immigration advice bids - Immigration Removal Centres Only

Revised tender timeline published

Due to the unexpectedly high number of appeals across all nine Immigration Removal Centres our initial estimate of two weeks to deal with appeals was insufficient.

In order that the Legal Director (or her representative) can adequately consider each appeal submitted in relation to this invitation to tender, we now estimate that outcomes of appeals and confirmation of contract awards will be communicated the week commencing 17 November 2008.

A further knock on effect of this delay is that contracts are now estimated to commence the week commencing 15 December 2008.

To take account of the above delay we have now revised the timetable for this invitation to tender.  The amended timetable can be found in the documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

In light of the above, it is our intention to extend existing contracts until the new contracts commence on 15 December 2008.

Update 7 October 08: outcome of immigration advice bids

All organisations that tendered to provide these services should by now have received letter(s) dated 3 Oct confirming whether they are a preferred bidder to provide immigration advice to individuals detained in an Immigration Removal Centre at a Police Station in England & Wales or whether they were unsuccessful in obtaining a contract.

Those organisations that tendered to provide these services that have not received a letter(s) should email the immigration team to obtain a copy.

The deadline for submission of any appeals is 4pm on Monday 13 Oct 2008, as specified in the revised timetable which was published on our website on 17 Sept and which can be accessed via the Documents section to the right of this page.

The appeals process is set out in the Information for Applicants. Please note that any appeal(s) should be addressed to the following address and not to our previous (Roger Street) address specified in the Information for Applicants:-

Glyn Hardy
Immigration Policy Team
Legal Services Commission
4th Floor, 4 Abbey Orchard Street,
London
SWIP 2BS

DX 328
London

Update 17 September 08: outcome of immigration advice bids

Revised tender timeline published

A revised tender timetable has now been published and can be found in the documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

You will be aware that the LSC has recently invited tender bids for immigration advice in immigration removal centres and in police stations, with the intention of commencing new contracts in October 2008

Regrettably the assessment process has taken longer than we initially anticipated and we were not in a position to update applicants on 5 Sept 08 as planned.

All organisations that tendered to provide these services will now be advised of the outcome of its tender on 6 Oct 2008. The services will commence on 24 Nov 2008.

Update 9 Sep 08: outcome of bids

We apologise for the delay in updating you on this tender.

The assessment process has taken longer than we initially anticipated. We were not in a position to update applicants on 5 Sep 08 as planned.

We will provide a revised timetable as soon as possible - check this page for updates.    

About this tender

Following the successful pilot of two schemes for detained asylum seekers and immigrants, the LSC has confirmed that these schemes are to become a permanent part of the legal aid service, by inviting organisations to tender to deliver the work.

The tender closing dates are:

Applications received after these dates will not be considered.

About the process

The invitations to tender are for the delivery of specialist, high quality and easily accessible services for advice and representation at:

We ran a similar tender exercise for these contracts in Nov 07 which terminated without an award in Apr 08. Organisations that submitted bids to provide immigration advice in Nov 07 will need to submit a fresh tender in accordance with the new Information For Applicants.

Two successful pilots

The Police Station Telephone Immigration Advice Pilot and the On-site Immigration Detention Advice Pilot have informed the development of the model we are running tender rounds for. 

Police Station Immigration Telephone Advice

The pilot was set up on 12 June 2006 to address an advice gap. 

Individuals detained at the police stations often faced difficulty in accessing civil immigration advice, particularly outside office hours and weekends.

The pilot has successfully provided telephone advice to clients 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. Going forward, the service will run from 7am to midnight.

The scheme wiill allow clients to:

Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) Advice

This scheme will operate as an:

The Fast Track service will operate only in Harmondsworth and Yarls Wood IRCs.

List of documents

Please see the Documents panel for:

For more information

We have clarified one point for the delivery of immigration telephone advice to individuals detained at police stations. The closing date for receipt of these tenders is extended to 12 noon 27 Aug 08.

See the 'notice of changes' in Documents for details.

Please email the immigration team if you have any questions relating to the tender process.

Further details will be publicised via the news pages of this website – please check back regularly.

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Last updated: 11 March 2009

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