Members of the public calling the Community Legal Advice helpline run by the Legal Services Commission could in future be answered outside the UK, it has emerged.

The Legal Services Commission is to issue tenders for five-year contracts to provide a contact centre and telephone services to support it. Together, the contracts are worth between £9m and £13.5m.

The call centre, currently operated in Manchester by outsourcing company bss, receives around 43,000 new callers a month. The new contracts will extend service hours into the evening and for four hours on Saturdays (See [2009] Gazette, 15 January, 1).

As a major public procurement, the contract has to be offered across all EU member states and beyond. The Gazette understands that at least one non-EU government has expressed an interest on behalf of local business. A solicitor examining the tender on its behalf said that it was hard to see how the centre could be operated in the UK for the amount offered. This suggests that ‘offshoring’ is a realistic possibility.

The call centre is a ‘triage’ phone service, filtering all calls to Community Legal Advice. Operators can provide non-tailored advice, send out leaflets, direct the caller to other advice providers, connect financially eligible callers to a specialist adviser, or provide details of local face-to-face advisers and book appointments.