Call-Off Legal Advice in relation to Retail Market Opening

Background: The Water Act 2014 received Royal Assent on 14 May 2014. It introduces reforms that will extend competition in the retail market for non-household water and sewerage services in England – the Retail Market Opening programme (RMO). The reforms will mean that eligible customers are free to negotiate the package that best suits their needs. Benefits may come from more efficient customer services, better-tailored packages, water efficiency advice, or a better deal on price.

The UK government is committed to opening the retail market in April 2017. This new market will need to work effectively with the existing market in Scotland. Alongside our own work on RMO, we contribute to Open Water – the UK Government’s overall programme of work to implement the new market. This is a joint programme of work with a number of organisations involved including Defra and Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL). Our legal advisors are required to support us in working with these other parties and their legal advisers.

Further information and our publications on the RMO programme are available on our website at http://www.open-water.org.uk/.

Objective(s): There are a number of work streams within the RMO programme working in parallel to deliver this. Each work stream requires legal support. This involves providing advice in relation to proposals for the development and implementation of:

• New legislation; • New licences and changes to existing licence and appointment conditions; • Market codes; • Development and publication of guidance; • Customer protection measures; and • Governance arrangements.

The Client needs to have call-off services in place which will provide the expertise and technical support needed in order to meet the requirements of the RMO programme. The Client requires high quality relevant legal advice to be provided in an approachable, appropriate and timely manner to enable the RMO programme to deal with / respond to matters within the set legal or policy time frames.

Scope of Work and Services: The successful Supplier will be required to provide legal services to support the RMO programme including advice in relation to matters arising out of or relating to the RMO programme including:

• Regulatory law; • Public infrastructure regulation including UK/EU regulation applicable to the water and wastewater sector; • Public law; • Competition law; • Corporate / commercial law; • European law; • Legislation (including drafting legislation); • Regulatory instruments including licences, statutory and non-statutory codes; • Procurement; • Outsourcing and contracting out of services; • Intellectual Property and Information technology; • Internal and external publications and communications

The successful Supplier may also be required to provide advice on an ad hoc basis on matters relating to: freedom of information, data protection, consumer law, state aid, tax.

Additional information: Please note that this is a call-off contract so it is difficult to quantify exact spend.