The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has just published its 'invitation to tender for mental health services'. The LSC has no power to allocate work to solicitors but is inviting 'bids' for a hypothetical volume of work at various specified hospitals. If firms are awarded a contract to work at these specified hospitals they will only be able to proceed if patients request them. This partially relies on the Mental Health Act administrator at the hospital adding the firm's name to the list of available representatives.


I telephoned several Mental Health Act administrators to discuss the LSC's scheme. I discovered that the LSC had not consulted them and they were all unaware that firms had been invited to tender for work at their hospitals.



The LSC refuses to accept that their reforms have already lowered quality and increased unethical practices such as representatives touting for business on hospital wards. The Mental Health Act administrators I spoke to were all concerned that the LSC's invitation to tender would exacerbate these problems. They were astonished that the LSC had not consulted them.



The LSC has presumably decided that consultation is a waste of everyone's time. This is something which many firms already suspected.



Karen Wolton, Wolton & Co, Deal, Kent