You win some, you lose some

It's more than three years since I first wrote about CLACs - Community Legal Advice Centres.  They were the government's response to the spiralling cost of legal aid.  Get local councils to make contracts with a single deliverer of all advice services, including legal advice, and channel the money exclusively to that deliverer.  It seemed pretty clear that they envisaged that the existing services, such as the CAB, would team up with others to bid for the contracts; and that's what happened in the first CLAC.  But then A4e spotted an opportunity, got together with a Sheffield legal firm and set their bid writers on it.  The result was, inevitably, that A4e got the Leicester CLAC.  The Hull one followed, and only then did alarm bells start ringing.  The government hadn't really intended that the CAB, along with all other advice services like Law Centres, would go out of business because of lack of funding.  When I blogged about this in May 2010 there were five CLACs with five more planned, but A4e still only had the two.  Then, as funding was withdrawn across the piece, the idea of the CLACs quietly died.  The Leicester one is still run by A4e, but in Hull the contract ends in March next year and is not being renewed, because of the loss of the £600k from the LSC which was half its funding.  The CAB is being brought back in.
It doesn't matter much to A4e.  The CLACs have been a stepping stone to other advice service contracts, like the Money Advice Service.
There's an interesting job on offer at A4e's Westminster office - Public Affairs Officer.  It seems to be mainly about political connections.  Any takers?

Reporting the data loss

There has been remarkably little interest in the theft of a laptop containing personal client data from an A4e employee. Most of the coverage has simply repeated A4e's own press release. And some of the descriptions of A4e, such as "the jobs club firm" reveal a lack of knowledge of the company and its activities (although that particular description on the Register site also mentioned the fact that A4e administers the Home Office test for would-be citizens) . Even the BBC's local news filmed outside A4e's offices in Hull and referred to the company's "legal department" without mentioning the CLAC. One client of the CLAC said that the apology from A4e wasn't good enough and asked why the data was in someone's home. The news item drew comparisons with other data theft scandals, and Jo Blundell was put up to say that A4e are taking all the action they can.

The Guardian went with "Review to look at fairness of incapacity benefit tests", saying: "The contracts will in many cases not give private firms any money until they have found work, with the fee rising probably after someone has stayed in work for six months, 12 months or even two years. Emma Harrison, director for A4E , the largest private contractor, said she was delighted that the government was merging the different welfare to work schemes into one work programme, saying it would cut time and the cost of bidding for many small contracts. She said contractors were in discussion with banks to see if they would provide loans to cover the new regime of payment by results."

Oops!

Quite an embarrassment for A4e - "Laptop with personal data of 24,000 people is stolen". It's the data from the two A4e-run CLACs in Hull and Leicester, and was on the laptop of an A4e employee stolen in London in a domestic burglary (the laptop, not the employee!) The fact that all that information could be on someone's laptop kept at home is really startling. It's Bob Martin, group chief executive of A4e, who's had to make the apology. "We sincerely apologise to all those affected by this incident. It should not have happened. While we are advised that the risk to clients is low we are taking every precaution to ensure their interests are protected."

Meanwhile, the "framework agreement" has been published by the DWP. It stresses that "organisations are expected to have good financial standing and arrangements that will enable them to manage the risks associated with the delivery of business under this framework agreement. As a minimum, organisations must have the ability to deliver across an entire Lot and manage the financial demands of delivering at least one package of business without undue risk to the specific requesting contracting body." So only the big companies need bother applying.

There's a neat story about the Work Programme on the thisismoney site, which suggests that providers will get a "nominal" sum for those clients they don't get into work. How nominal, one wonders.