Social Welfare Law and Family (including Family Mediation)

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Latest updates
Background information - procurement plans

Latest updates

9 August 2011 – Action following closure of Law For All

A large London-based Social Welfare Law provider, Law For All, entered into administration on 28 July 2011. We are working with the administrators to ensure ongoing access to advice for existing clients with minimum disruption.

We have taken steps to re-allocate unopened matters to ensure that services continue to be available for new clients, particularly in Ealing where Law For All delivered much of the Procurement Area’s debt, housing and employment work. The approach we have taken is consistent with that taken following the closure of the Immigration Advisory Service.

Where we are unable to ensure continued access through the supplementary matter start provisions in the contract, we have re-allocated work following the approach used to allocate work in the 2010 tender exercise. We have written to all providers who were eligible for a contract in that tender exercise but were either not awarded one owing to the level of competition, or were awarded fewer NMS than they bid for. They will need to confirm by Monday 15 August whether they wish to take on the NMS bid for and whether they have the required capacity to take on this work. We will then allocate NMS in line with their ranked position as it was at the time of tender process in 2010.

17 May 2011 - Recent tender processes have now closed.
All recent tender processes in SWL categories of law have closed. Results of those processes run in March and April have been communicated to Applicant Organisations. In the tender processes which closed today, tenders are now being assessed and results will be communicated shortly.

13 April 2011 – Invitations to Tender to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in the areas of North Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire South and City of Westminster and a Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme (HPCDS) in Wandsworth.

About this tender

We have today opened a tender process to invite tenders to deliver the Social Welfare Law (SWL) categories of Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits in four areas:

The Access Point of North Lincolnshire
The Procurement Area of Oxfordshire
The Access Point of Warwickshire South
The Procurement Area of City of Westminster

We have also opened a tender process to invite tenders to deliver a HPCDS in Wandsworth.

The tender opens on 13 April 2011 and closes at 12 noon on 17 May 2011. The new contracts begin on 1 August 2011. An Information for Applicants document and accompanying annexes are in the documents section of this page.

Update 10 May 11 - The deadline for submitting questions was 12 noon on 3 May 2011. A list of Frequently Asked Quesions is available in the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

4 April 2011 - Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in Portsmouth

We are seeking expressions of interest to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in Portsmouth on a temporary basis until 30 November 2011.

Further details can be found in the documents section on the right hand side of this page. Any expressions of interest must be submitted by 4pm on Wednesday 6 April 2011.

1 April 2011 – Update on Invitations to Tender to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits Services in the areas of Southampton, Herefordshire and Rest of Cambridgeshire and the Tender for a Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme in South West Wales

The period for asking questions in respect of these tenders closed at 12pm on 29 March 2011. No questions that required including in a Frequently Asked Questions document were received. FAQs relating to the 2010 HPCDS Invitations to Tender and 2010 SWL Invitations to Tender can be found under documents on the Civil Contracts for 2010 page.

Clarification re websites

Subsequent to the publication of the IFA for these tenders it has been agreed that the transfer of the LSC website to the justice.gov.uk website will not go forward at the present time - as set out on page 2 of each IFA. Instead all the URLs in the document will continue to work as they do now.

17 March 2011 – Invitations to Tender to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits Services in the areas of Southampton, Herefordshire and Rest of Cambridgeshire

We have today opened a tender process to invite tenders to deliver the Social Welfare Law categories of Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits in three areas:

The Procurement Area of Southampton
The Access Point of Herefordshire
The Access Point of Rest of Cambridgeshire

In the areas of Southampton and Herefordshire, no services have historically been available for clients and no access to advice in the categories of Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits was secured following our recent tender process for contracts which began on 15 November 2010. As a result we are now relaxing the presence requirements for these areas as part of this tender to also accept bids from applicants with a permanent presence in certain neighbouring procurement areas.

The tender opens on 17 March 2011 and closes at 12 noon on 18 April 2011. The new contracts begin on 18 July 2011. An Information for Applicants document and accompanying annexes are in the documents section of this page.

The deadline for submitting questions is 12 noon on 29 March 2011. You must submit all questions and tenders through the LSC's secure eTendering system.

17 March 2011 - Tender for a Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme in South West Wales
We have today opened a tender process to invite tenders to deliver a Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes in South West Wales covering Carmarthen, Haverfordwest and Llanelli County Courts from 6 June 2011. The Information for Applicants is in the documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

The deadline for asking questions is 12 noon 29 March 2011. The deadline for submitting tender is 12 noon 18 April 2011.

You must submit all questions and tenders through the LSC's secure eTendering system.

9 March 2011 - Notices re: Expressions of Interest to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in the Access Point of Rest of Cambridgeshire
On 11 February 2011 we asked for expressions of interest to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in the Rest of Cambridgeshire. Due to the high level of response, we will be running a formal tender exercise in order to let contracts to deliver the work available.

9 March 2011 - Notices re: Expressions of Interest to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in the Access Points of North Lincolnshire, Warwickshire South and the Procurement Area of Oxfordshire
We have today published notices and forms relating to expressions of interest to deliver Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits services in the above Access Points and Procurement Area. These notices are available in the documents panel on the right hand side of this page. Please note that the deadline for responses is 4pm on Wednesday 23 March 2011.

1 March 2011 - Updated Tender Outcomes information published
We have today published updated information on the outcomes of last year's Social Welfare Law tender processes. This is available in the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

8 February 2011 - Publication of outcome of Family Mediation tender process
We have today published details of the outcomes of the Family Mediation tender process. These are available in the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

27 January 2011 – Publication of outcome of Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme tender process
We have today published details of the outcomes of the Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme tender process. These are available in the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

17 January 2011 - Tender for Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes in Portsmouth and Gateshead
The deadline for asking questions in respect of this tender was 5pm 10 January 2011. No questions have been received. An FAQ relating to the 2010 HPCDS Invitations to Tender can be found under documents on the Civil Contracts for 2010 page.

12 January 2011 - Unified Contract (Family and Family with Housing) extension - update for Providers on the new schedules being issued

We have today published an update on the new Schedules for Providers who are delivering work under the extended Unified Contract in Family and Family with Housing. The existing Unified Contract Schedules under which this work is delivered cover the period up to 14 January 2011. We will shortly be sending out new Schedules to cover the period 15 January 2011 to 30 November 2011.

These Schedules will set out the number of NMS which can be carried out in Family (and Housing where applicable), as well as information on the Offices where work can be carried out, and Tolerance work.

The Update on the new Schedules is available on our Unified Contract page.

10 January 2011 - Tender for SWL services in Reading, West Berkshire and Wokingham

We are inviting interested parties to tender for civil contracts in the Social Welfare Law categories of Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits in Reading, West Berkshire and Wokingham.

The tender opens on 10 January 2011 and closes at 12 noon on 7 February 2011. An Information for Applicants document and accompanying annexes along with a Procurement Plan and Tender Timetable can be found in the documents section on the right hand side of this page.

Interested parties are able to submit questions about this tender up until 17:00 on Monday 24 January. Any queries or questions should be emailed to: claservices@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk

17 December 2010 – Publication of outcome of tender process
Outcomes of the Social Welfare Law tender processes are in the documents section on this page. Because of the volumes involved, the results for Debt, Housing and Welfare Benefits have been published by region. New Matter Start volumes have been included where the category is held and have been left blank where it is not.

Please note that contract validation is still ongoing and a number of contracts are yet to be issued, therefore these lists are subject to change.

Family and Family with Housing information has not been included at this time but we will publish this information after the next schedule extension.

14 December 2010

Tender for Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes in Portsmouth and Gateshead opens

We have today published Invitations to Tender for Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes in Portsmouth and Gateshead from 1 April 2011. The Information for Applicants is available in the documents panel on the right hand side of this page.

The deadline for asking questions is 5pm 10 January 2011. The deadline for submtting tender is 12 noon 24 January 2011.

The deadline for asking questions has now passed. No questions have been received. An FAQ relating to the 2010 HPCDS Invitations to Tender can be found under documents on the Civil Contracts for 2010 page.

You must submit all questions and tenders through the LSC's secure eTendering system. The eTendering site can be accessed through the eTendering portal.

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: 09 August 2011