Family tender – peer review 4 or 5

Further to our last post, we have been contacted by a number of firms that answered ‘yes’ to the question asking if they had a confirmed result of 4 or 5 at peer review rather than ‘no’. As a result, they have been refused contracts.

The Information for Applicants (paragraph 31) is pretty clear that there is only one ground for appeal, which is ‘…..where it reasonably on the information contained in the Tender (subject to paragraph 24), considers that the LSC has made an error in its assessment of the Applicant’s Tender.’

Is it arguable that the LSC has made such an error in relation to the wrong answer being given about peer review scores, because the LSC holds the information about peer review results itself? Therefore, if it accepted an answer indicating a result of 4 or 5, when it knew the answer was wrong, it was making an error in assessing the bid.

Hopefully, the LSC will see the force in this argument when considering appeals; but if not, we suspect there may be further judicial reviews in the pipleine.