DWF Llp v Secretary of State for Business Innovation And Skills
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LADY JUSTICE ARDEN
- SIR ROBIN JACOB
Areas of Law
- Contract Law
- Administrative Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case involves DWF's appeal against the Insolvency Service over a tendering process for legal services. Claims focused on breaches of transparency and fairness under the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. The court permitted the amendment of the claim and ruled on the continuation of an automatic suspension preventing contract awards.
Judgment
Sir Robin Jacob (giving the first judgment at the invitation of Arden LJ) :
Introduction
This appeal is from a judgment of 9 th May 2014 of His Honour Judge Raynor QC sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Technology and Construction Court. He refused an application by the claimant firm of solicitors (DWF) for permission to amend its Particulars of Claim.
The claim is against the Insolvency Service (“IS”). It comes about this way. On 5 th July 2013 the IS issued a notice for a tendering exercise to procure the provision of legal services both for England and Wales and for Scotland. It envisaged there would be awarded up to six contracts, 4 in England and Wales and 2 in Scotland for a period of 3 years. The value of the proposed contracts (bafflingly called a “framework”) was of the order of £32-50m.
The notice was in the Official Journal of the EU. The Invitation to Tender set out details of what services were wanted (“Statement of Requirements”) the award criteria and the scoring scheme to be used.
DWF tendered both for England and Wales and for Scotland on 5 th November 2013. DWF went to a presentation meeting on 10 th December which was followed by a Q&A session.
By a letter of 23 rd January, to which was attached an ”Award Decision Notice,” the IS told DWF that its bids for both Scotland and England and Wales had failed. The contracts for England and Wales were to go to the three incumbent providers and a new provider for England and Wales, Shepherd and Wedderburn, who were also awarded one of the Scottish contracts.
The Award Decision Notice provided details of the scores achieved. DWF had been awarded scores of 47% in respect of the Statement of Requirements (“Criterion 1”) and 27% in respect of the Pricing Model (“Criterion 2”), the total weighted score being therefore 74%. It was behind Shepherd and Wedderburn and another bidder for England and Wales by just 1%. The other winners had higher scores.
By letter dated 24 th January 2014 DWF asked the IS to explain why it lost. There was a debriefing meeting on 29 th January 2014. The IS said that the Shepherd and Wedderburn proposal contained more detail and gave greater comfort. On that basis that firm had been scored equally with the claimant under Criterion 1, but more highly on Criterion 2. Nothing was said in the course of that briefing about the presentations or any moderation (i.e. revision) of the scores.
A little later the IS provided DWF with the total scores of the bidders and a