Tag Archives: mediation

by | April 28, 2018 · 6:25 pm

LAA amends contracts for GDPR

The LAA has amended all current contracts in order to meet the requirements imposed by the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Law Enforcement Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/680), being implemented under Part 3 of the Data Protection bill. Amendments regarding the GDPR apply from 25 May 2018. Amendments relating to the Directive apply from 6 May 2018.

There are some detailed obligations. The LAA require you to notify them within 5 business days if you receive the following in relation to LAA or shared data:

  • A data subject request
  • A request to rectify, block or erase personal data
  • A complaint or other communication about your (or the LAA’s) handling of data
  • A communication from the Information Commissioner

You must also indemnify the LAA if it is fined because you fail to comply with the legislation.

You can find more information here.

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by | November 27, 2017 · 4:14 pm

Civil and Family contract extensions acceptance deadline

The LAA has sent emails to holders of civil, family and mediation contract holders to inform them about contract extensions to 31 August 2018.

Holders of 2010 contracts (Mediation) and 2013 contracts (Family, Immigration/Asylum, Housing/Debt) need to send back an acceptance form. The letters attached to emails give a deadline of 5 December 2017, the website says 6 December 2017.

Holders of Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme contracts will receive an extension offer in due course.

Holders of welfare benefits, mental health, and community care contracts will have their contracts extended automatically.

Holders of AAP etc., clinical negligence and public law contracts will have their contracts terminated earlier than originally envisaged, so that they will also end on 31 August 2018.

If you haven’t received an email, you should contact the LAA’s central commissioning team: civil.contracts@legalaid.gsi.gov.uk

More information can be found here.

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by | October 25, 2017 · 8:56 pm

Civil and family tender update

There have been several developments since we reported that the LAA opened the tender for face to face civil and family contracts to start in September 2018.

Tender open for HPCDS

The Agency has gone ahead with a complex price competitve tender for Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes (HPCDS), which seems unlikely to solve the crisis in finding sufficient practitioners to provide the schemes; but only time will tell. More information can be found here.

Most people are finding the process straightforward

However, most of the feedback we are receiving from practitioners bidding for face to face contracts is that the process is more straightforward than they anticipated.

People like the button which checks whether they have responded to all the questions they need to.

They also like being able to download a PDF of their bid. On the relevant ITT page, look out for the three little dots in the top right hand corner. If you click on that and then select ‘printable view’, you will be able to download a PDF of your bid.

FAQs

The LAA has issued some initial frequently asked questions – FAQs. These are worth reading. Amongst other things, they confirm that you will be able to withdraw from part of your bid without jeopardising the rest of it (FAQ 10.1).

Miscellaneous NMS

All successful bidders will get 5 miscellaneous NMS; but you can bid for 25 or more to undertake compensation claims for vicitims of trafficking and modern slavery. ATLEU (legal charity the Anti Trafficking and Legal Exploitation Unit) is encouraging practitioners to apply. They point out that this work is ideally suited to employment lawyers, discriminantion lawyers, personal injury lawyers and civil litigators more generally. With claims for failure to pay the National Minimum Wage (which are often a feature of such cases) being worth upwards of £100,000, perhaps this is worth considering? More details can be found on ATLEU’s website.

 

 

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by | September 21, 2017 · 10:03 am

Civil contracts for 2018 – tender open

The Legal Aid Agency has opened the tender for civil, family and mediation contracts to start on 1 September 2018. If you want to do legal aid work after 31 August 2018, you must submit a bid by the closing date and time 10 November at 5pm. Details can be found here.

The contracts will run for three years with an option for the LAA to extend for two years. Existing contracts are being extended.

You need to bid using the LAA’s tendering portal here.

Apart from Housing Possession Court Duty Schemes (HPCDS) and the CLA telephone service, bids are not competitive. As long as you can demonstrate that you meet the LAA’s requirements, and submit a technically correct bid, you will get a contract. The details of the tenders for HPCDS and CLA contracts will be released soon.

Top tips for successful bids

  • Read the Information for Applicants carefully. The answers are almost always in there somewhere
  • Where they are not, submit a question through the message board on the portal – the LAA publishes all questions and answers received
  • Read the FAQs carefully and submit your bid after the final ones are published; but comfortably in advance of the tender closing date
  • Register your bids on the portal as early as you can and start completing the Selection Questionnaire (SQ) and the Invitation to Tender(s) (ITTs) you are interested in. You will know some of the answers straight away and can come back to the ones you need to go away and find information to complete
  • Allocate a small team to the bid – say two people to complete it and a third to check it
  • Make sure several people are registered to receive emails about the bid. Sometimes the LAA raises queries that need to be answered quickly. You don’t want to miss them

The Law Society is running tender workshops throughout England and Wales. They are recommended. Details here.

LAPG is also running workshops between 27 September – 3 October – details here – also recommended.

 

 

 

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by | May 2, 2017 · 9:03 pm

Civil/Family contracts for 2018 tender postponed

The Legal Aid Agency has announced today that it has had to postpone the civil and family contracts tender, expected to open in May, until after the election.

No new date has been set and the Agency will issue more information when it is able to do so.

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by | March 18, 2017 · 3:01 pm

Legal Aid Agency changes start date for civil and family tender

On the 20th of January, the LAA announced that it intended to run a two-stage tender process for civil and family contracts to start in April 2018 and that stage 1 would probably start in April 2017, with stage 2 in August 2017. In February they announced that a family mediation tender would open at the same time.

On Friday 17 March, they announced that instead they would be running both the selection criteria and invitation to tender stages together in May 2017.

Practitioners will need to remain vigilant and watch out for further LAA announcements. They can be found here.

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by | July 24, 2016 · 8:31 am

Mediation contracts – take action

The Family Mediation Contract is due to expire on 31 October 2016. You should have received a letter from the LAA (sent on 14 July 2016) offering you an extension to 31 March 2018.

The deadline for returning the offer acceptance form is 23.59 on 4 August 2016. The LAA says that if you do not accept the offer in time, your contract will expire on 31 October 2016 and you will not be entitled to payment for work carried out after that date.

As the summer holidays are upon us, it is possible that the person who would normally deal with the LAA contract is away. It is important that action is taken within the deadline.

More information can be found here.

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by | December 23, 2015 · 10:23 am

Mediation providers get more time

The Legal Aid Agency is changing the submission date for mediation claims from the 10th of the month to the 20th. This brings the submission date in line with crime and civil claims. The next claim is now due by 20th January 2016.

You should have received official notification from the LAA; but any queries should be sent to Reconciliation@legalaid.gsi.gov.uk

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by | October 24, 2014 · 2:00 pm

Tender update

More news on a couple of ongoing or upcoming tenders:

  • The LAA has published an advert for the forthcoming clinical negligence, public law and actions against the police tenders. The tender opens on 1 December and closes on 23 January 2015.
  • The final FAQ for the current mediation tender has been published. This tender closes at noon on 31 October 2014. Remember that this tender is only for new entrants; existing mediation contract holders don’t need to apply unless they want to open additional locations.

 

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by | October 1, 2014 · 7:02 pm

Family mediation tender opens today

The LAA has opened a tender for new mediation contracts to start on 1 February 2015. The tender will remain open until 31 October 2014. Organisations with existing contracts need not do anything unless they want to open new outreach locations.The IFA and further information can be found here.

All organisations meeting the LAA’s requirements and completing the tender correctly will be offered a contract.

 

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