2010 Contracts Support and Guidance


These pages are currently under construction, and more information and detailed guidance will be added prior to the commencement of the planned tenders.

What’s on this page

Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ)- Common to ALL tenders

The PQQ aims to assess an applicant’s suitability to contract with us as a public body.  It contains a series of questions relating to areas such as professional and business conduct, conduct under previous public sector contracts, compliance with key legislation and compliance with quality standards.

The PQQ will be assessed on the basis of pass or fail. If an applicant fails the PQQ, their application will not be considered any further.

The PQQ should be filled in only once at organisational level and should not be filled in by each individual office applying to deliver services.

If you are applying for a second or subsequent contract / ITT (e.g. if you have already completed an application for a crime contract and are now applying for a civil contract), the eTendering system will automatically pre-populate the information in your PQQ based on your previous response.  In order for your subsequent application to be accepted you must reconfirm the information in the PQQ. You should either amend the previous response as appropriate (e.g. if some of the information previously provided is no longer current) or confirm that the previous information remains valid before the closing date for the tender exercise.

More information will be available on this page shortly.

Tendering for Civil Contracts

As announced in July, the current contracts will be extended for six months, and will expire on 30 September 2010. The new contract will come into force on 1 October 2010. Providers will need to apply for and be awarded a new contract in order to carry out any new civil legal aid work from 1 October 2010.

The tender process for the new contracts in Immigration and Asylum will begin in the week beginning 30 November 2009. For contracts in all other civil categories, the tender process will begin in early February 2010.

More information can be found on the LSC Civil Contract page.

Tendering for Crime Contracts

The tender for crime contracts to include duty solicitor work in Best Value Tendering pilot areas is planned to begin in the week beginning 4 January 2010. The national non-BVT tender for all other crime contracts starts one week later.

Both will be open for a period of four weeks. The auction stage of the BVT application process is due to take place in March 2010, with face to face training by the auction provider for applicants invited to this stage scheduled for February.

More information can be found on the LSC Crime Contract pages