Commercial

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We advise on the full range of commercial law issues relevant to our public, private, and third sector clients operating in the Health and Social Care field.

We advise on supplies and services contracts between public bodies (including NHS bodies, local authorities and central government departments) and where third and private sector organisations are contracting with public bodies for the delivery of supplies and services.

The NHS is increasingly moving towards the use of legally binding contracts, instead of non-legally binding Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and we advise on both types of agreement. We have an in-depth understanding of all of the standard contracting regimes applicable to service provision in the NHS, including primary care contracts (GMS, PMS, APMS) and standard Department of Health (DH) contracts for acute, mental health, ambulance and community health services.

We advise many clients on the flexible powers of Section 75 of the NHS Act 2006 to ensure effective joint commissioning and integrated provision of health and social care services.

We also advise on grant funding arrangements under Section 256 of the NHS Act 2006 and under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968.

We have worked with many public sector commissioners such as Primary Care Trusts and local authorities and now GP commisioning consortia, on the development of commissioning strategies, including the development of specifications. We also advise on public procurement law and regulation.

We have expertise in the drafting and negotiation of clinical trial agreements, which naturally complements the commercial work that we do for the NHS. In addition to our clinical trial contractual competency, we have expertise in advising on the regulatory aspects of clinical trials (MHRA regulation, ethics approval, data protection, patient protections and sponsor responsibilities).

Key Services and Issues

Supplies and services contracts between public bodies
Supplies and services contracts between public bodies and third sector / private sector organisations
Non-legally binding Service Level Agreements between NHS bodies
NHS contracting regimes for:

Primary care (GMS, PMS, APMS) and community services
Mental health services
Acute services
Ambulance services

Commissioning – including strategies, specification development and the Framework for procuring External Support for Commissioners (FESC)
Public procurement law and regulation
Partnership Agreements
Capital and Revenue Grant Agreements
Clinical Trial related commercial and regulatory advice

Our Work

We supported Ashton, Leigh and Wigan Primary Care Trust (PCT) in a deal under FESC which aims to greatly improve the health of people in the North West. The deal between the PCT and healthcare commissioning experts Tribal Consulting Limited will create a partnership which it is hoped can impact significantly on the health of local people by commissioning access to healthcare services they need. See our News Brief articles for more information.