Councils forced to re-run tender for £4m legal services framework
A group of councils has been forced to re-run a tender for a £4m legal services framework agreement after discovering a flaw in its original procurement exercise.
The consortium – made up of North Lincolnshire Council, North East Lincolnshire Council and Hull City Council – has cancelled the earlier procurement launched in June 2010 and is now proposing to use an accelerated restricted procedure.
According to the new tender notice, the termination of the earlier procurement was based on a decision not to award due to a defect in process in which the 50:50 price:quality weighting “was on financial advice found not to work as a true 50:50 split”.
It added: “We have corrected the error in the methodology and propose to re-issue essentially adopting the earlier tender documents with some small modifications to reflect the clarifications raised by the bidders in the former process.”
The notice said that an accelerated restricted procedure was considered appropriate due to the fact that the original target date of 1 April 2011 had been missed and “as we are keen to have the framework in place as soon as practicable the criteria for ARP that compliance with the standard reg 16 time limits is impracticable due urgency is met”.
The framework agreement, which excludes counsel, is estimated to be worth £4m over the course of its four years.
The scope of the contract is likely to include two lots:
- Part A: procurement, corporate, commercial, contracts, joint ventures; other major projects; planning, highways, CPO, regeneration; judicial review, governance; human rights including FOI and data protection; commercial litigation.
- Part B: social care (incorporating childcare, adults and education); debt recovery; civil litigation; criminal litigation and licensing; conveyancing; employment; housing.
The councils are proposing to grant to framework members the exclusive right to participate in competition for call-offs for work exceeding the value of £10,000 for Part A and £5,000 for Part B. Work below these values may be offered at the discretion of the councils.
The notice said the authorities envisage that the number of operators invited to tender or participate will range from a minimum of five to a maximum of 30.
A North Lincolnshire Council spokesman said: "We made the decision to restart the procurement process when we identified a defect in our pricing methodology during the initial phases of Invitation to Tender evaluation confirmation.
"It was fairer for us to revise and restart the bidding process rather than rectify the defect. This decision was made by the Consortium and was not the result of a challenge from any of the bidders."
Philip Hoult