Current civil legal aid contracts come to an end on 13 October 2010. Any organisation who wishes to deliver legal aid work in Social Welfare Law and Family from 14 October 2010 will need to apply for and be awarded a new contract.

We are now publishing updated procurement plans setting out what services we will be procuring for these new 2010 contracts in Social Welfare Law and Family categories of law across England and Wales.

Some of the plans will be published today, others will be published next week.

Initial plans were published in summer 2009, and have now been updated to reflect more recent data on work carried out in these categories of law, and budget decisions for 2010-11.

The plans set out the number of New Matter Starts which will be available in each category, what level of service we will be procuring, and local considerations and criteria.

The plans are available from the Social Welfare Law and Family tendering pages. Further information on the tender process in general and links to our eTendering website are available on the Civil Contracts for 2010 tendering pages.

The tender process for social welfare law and family will begin in the week beginning 22 February 2010, and run for just over seven weeks.