As OnTheWight reported yesterday, the Isle of Wight council have rejected the Law Centre’s bid to provide independent, impartial legal advice to Islanders on housing related issues and court advice.
The council say the Law Centre needed to bid for the “full scope of the contract as set out in the Tender Pack”.
Law Centre would lose status if not independent
However, the Law Centre have said today that bidding for the entire contract (as they have said before) would not have been possible.
They explain it would lead to them losing their ‘Law Centre status’, for no longer be seen as being impartial.
Thatcher: “Designed to exclude us”
Matt Thatcher , the Law Centre Manager, told OnTheWight,
“The tender was designed to exclude us, so this announcement comes as no surprise, especially as the IOW Council seems to have established its own ‘in house’ advice service within County Hall.
“Any organisation that complies with the specification of the tender, will have to forgo both their independence and confidentiality by being forced to move into County Hall.”
What happens if IWC Claimant or Defendant?
The ground floor of County Hall has been adapted and now houses the Citizen Advice Bureau and Age Concern IW.
Matt went on to say,
“For the past 16 years the IOW Law Centre has focused on preventing families becoming homeless, but the IOW Council appears to have abandoned homeless prevention; and instead, is encouraging families to go to County Hall to be rehoused.
“It looks like from 1st July the AIG (Advice, Information and Guidance) in County Hall will be dealing with all civil litigation matters for Islanders, but if the IOW Council is either the Claimant or Defendant, we don’t know how they will resolve that conflict; or even how the AIG plans to deliver those services?”
Concern over lack of impartiality
According to the Law Centre, the feedback they’ve had from the public is of concern about going into County Hall to seek advice on insolvency, evictions, social security appeal etc.
He went on to say,
“We’ve been informed that the AIG will be dealing with: evictions, homelessness, possession claims, insolvency, social security appeal tribunals, employment tribunals etc, and we’ve been informed that the Council felt the Law Centre was simply duplicating their ‘in house’ advice service, and when we asked who we were duplicating our services with, we never received a response.
“The feedback we have received from the general public is that they will not receive independent, impartial, and confidential advice from the ‘in house’ advice service at County Hall.”
Thatcher: IWC knew we couldn’t apply for full contract
Matt finished by saying,
“One of the reasons we were unable to apply for the full tender was because we were informed by the Law Centre Network that would lose our Law Centre status because we would no longer be seen as being impartial.
“The Council knew that we would be unable to apply for the full tender and that was the reason we asked for a change in the procurement process, which was denied. We were still encouraged to apply for the tender, which we did, covering all of our specialist areas.
“The Council were made fully aware of our position of not being able to apply for the full tender, therefore excluding us from the very beginning.”
