Press Releases

Improving family legal aid services for vulnerable people throughout England and Wales is at the heart of the current family legal aid tender.
 
We are disappointed that The Law Society has issued a pre-action protocol letter.  We agree with Resolution (a family law representative body) that further uncertainty will have a far greater destabilising effect on the availability of family legal aid than allowing the tender to take its course.

It was always clear that this would be a competitive process.  The Legal Services Commission carried out a formal public consultation on the process which was followed by discussions with representative bodies.  These led to many of their recommendations being adopted, including accreditation.

Under the new contracts, the LSC will commission the same level of help as last year, therefore, contracting with fewer legal firms does not equate to providing less access to justice.  The LSC has selected providers who demonstrated the highest level of expertise and experience under the competitive process and allocated work in accordance with their bids.

We are aware that, in a very small number of procurement areas, there are issues for us to address.  However, the tender is not yet complete as we are currently carrying out a verification exercise and completing appeals. 

We remain confident that, by the end of the tender process, we will resolve these issues.  Once the process is complete we will undertake and publish a full review and we will discuss the scope of such a review with The Law Society, Resolution and other representative bodies.     

The LSC is fully aware of its statutory obligations and will continue its discussions with The Law Society and other representative bodies to ensure the continued availability of high quality legal aid services for clients.