Social Welfare Law and Family (including Family Mediation)

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Latest updates
Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes - tender process now closed
Clarification notices
Background information - procurement plans

Latest updates

18 August 2010

Tender outcome update
All Social Welfare Law and Famiy notifications have now been completed.

A lot of providers have been contacting us about the family legal aid tender, following some inaccurate and confusing press reports.

We are aware of concerns over allocations in some areas, and we'll continue to review the situation and take further action if necessary.

However, we must emphasise that the tender process has not finished. In line with the process outlined in the Information for Applicants document, the next step is to carry out a verification exercise. This is aimed at ensuring providers can deliver on the new matter start numbers they have successfully bid for.

We're also currently considering appeals from applicants. This is separate from the verification exercise. The appeals process may or may not result in some unsuccessful applicants being given new matter starts. But if an organisation is successful on appeal, it won't affect existing allocations to successful applicants, so long as those applicants have proved they can deliver the work they won.

Appeals
Deadlines for the receipt of appeals is two weeks after notification e.g. if a letter states that the deadline for appeal is 7 August, organisations must submit their appeal by 12 midnight on 7 August.

Rights of appeal are set out in the Information for Applicants. Any appeals should be sent via the eTendering message system. Appeals will not be considered until after the appeal deadline and we will notify organisations of the outcome through the eTendering system once a decision has been reached (we are aiming to consider appeals in approximately one month).

Please note, appeals will be prioritised where:

Organisations have been assessed as unsuccessful and as a result have no contract offer
Organisations have been unsuccessful in their tender for Housing and have also tendered for Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme work.

We are prioritising appeals where organisations are challenging the information against which we have verified family accrediation.

Requests under the Freedom of Information Act
We have received a large number of requests under the Freedom of Information Act relating to tender outcomes and subsequent appeals. These include requests for information in relation to other organisations’ tender outcomes. For more information on these requests, please see our Information released page.

E-tender messages
We are currently receiving a high volume of messages through the eTendering system. We had aimed to respond to messages within 4 days. However, owing to the high volumes, responses may take slightly longer. We will aim to provide a response no later than 7 working days from the date of receipt.

Any messages and appeals should be sent through the message board of the relevant ITT in the eTendering portal.

Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes - tender process now closed

The tender process for delivering advice through Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes is now closed. The deadline for submitting tenders was 12 noon on Friday 16 July 2010.

Tenders are now being assessed. Applicants will be notified through the message boards in the eTendering portal.

Further clarification on Family Services Exclusively for Children

Further to the final FAQ for the Family and Social Welfare Law Invitations to Tender published on our website on 7 April, some representative bodies have expressed concern that their members remain unclear about whether they are able to tender for both Family Services exclusively for Children and Family Services.

As set out in the Information for Applicants (IFA) the purpose of the Family Services exclusively for Children contract is to ensure that applicant organisations who exclusively provide publicly funded advice and representation services for Children are able to undertake this work. Therefore, if an applicant organisation wants to only undertake work exclusively for children, it should tender for this work.

However, if an applicant organisation wishes to undertake cases across a wider range of services and clients in the Family Category of Law (including representing Children), it should tender for a Family Services contract.

Providers can only hold one of these contracts and in the event that an applicant organisation responds to both tenders, we will seek clarification during the assessment process as to which set of Essential Criteria the applicant organisation meets.

Further clarification on consortia

Further to the final FAQ for the Family and Social Welfare Law Invitations to Tender published on our website on 7 April, some representative bodies have expressed concern that their members remain unclear about how they should tender as part of a consortium for Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits work.

By way of further confirmation of responses to questions 10.3 to 10.6, where an applicant organisation will deliver services (in addition to those it provides from its own office) through its fellow consortium members’ offices, it does not need to tender from fellow consortium members’ offices, only its own.

Where a consortium is awarded a contract, details of fellow consortium members and where their offices are located will be added to each individual office’s contract schedule, to enable all services to be delivered from each office within the consortium.

Background information - procurement plans

We published updated procurement plans for Family and Social Welfare Law services in early February, setting out the services we intended to procure in each area. However, a small number of plans have subsequently been revised to take account of detail changes. The affected plans can be identified by the word 'REVISED' in their title and we advise organisations that they should check the procurement plans incase of any changes that may affect them. These plans do NOT form part of the formal tender documentation.

The procurement plan for Family Mediation can be found on the documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

Follow the links in the table below to find the updated Social Welfare Law and Family procurement plans for each region.

Region
London
Midlands and East of England
North East
North West
South
South West
Yorkshire & Humberside
Wales

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Last updated: 17 August 2010