Legal Advice to Ofwat

Tender description

The objective of this work is to provide Ofwat with high quality relevant legal advice in an approachable, appropriate and timely fashion to support Ofwat in carrying out its functions and to enable the relevant Ofwat policy teams to deal with / respond to matters within the set legal or policy time frames. Scope of work The ITT is divided into two Lots. Suppliers may bid for one or both Lots. • Lot 1 is for work focussed primarily on the PR19 programme of work. We are looking to appoint two firms where we receive two sufficiently high quality bids, each under a call off agreement, to advise primarily on matters relating to the PR19 programme. It is intended that each appointed firm will advise on particular aspects of PR19, with Ofwat broadly aiming at this stage to allocate a relatively equal spread of work across the appointed firms over the course of the contract, and to take into account Ofwat's view of who is best placed at any given time that it allocates work under this Lot, taking into account appointed firms' capacity. Appointed firms may have to advise collaboratively across areas with another firm/other firms or Counsel. • Lot 2 is for legal advice to support Ofwat's other policy work areas, primarily in relation to the Finance & Governance programme, but on an ad hoc basis potentially also for work undertaken in our Strategy Hub, or our Market Outcomes and Enforcement programme. We are looking to appoint up to two firms where we receive two sufficiently high quality bids under this lot, each under a call off agreement. Firms will be selected to advise on particular parcels of work by a mini tender. The call off agreements are expected to commence in mid-late August 2018 and will run to the end of March 2021 . Each agreement will be non-exclusive and the Client reserves the right to appoint other external advisers on the work described in this invitation to tender during the period, in particular, where we consider it appropriate, external Counsel. Key disciplines required, but are not limited to: Regulatory law, in particular law relating to the economic regulation of the water and wastewater sector in England and Wales; • Public/Administrative law; • Competition law; • Regulatory instruments (operation of and drafting licences, charging rules, statutory and non-statutory codes); • Corporate law; • Contract and commercial law; • Environmental law; • Information law; • Public procurement, including outsourcing and contracting out of services. • Litigation and dispute resolution, including Judicial Reviews and Competition Market Appeals (CMA) references relevant to Ofwat's work. Additional disciplines may be required throughout the call off term: • Banking and finance law • Pensions law • Tax law • Insurance law