Client instruction to Legal Services

About this form 

Use this form to submit a request to Legal Services for support and advice on contracts or agreements over the value of £25k.

Instructions to Legal Services for contracts require a minimum of 10 working days to action, unless they marked as urgent. All urgent requests must be signed off by your head of service with justification as to why the request is urgent. If marked as urgent then you must confirm that your corporate director has provided prior approval and a copy of your form will be submitted to them as well as to Legal Services.

Legal Services are only resourced to provide support and advice for contracts of a value greater than £25k. If the contract you are managing is below this value, please do not complete this form as you do not require legal advice or support and your request will not be approved.

Any legal Instruction form (above the value of £25k) will need to be accompanied with the relevant corporate approval/authorisation, which will need to be uploaded within this form. For example - a copy of or website link to the relevant cabinet/cabinet member/committee report or completed gateway paper. If acting under delegated authority, provide details of the appropriate section of the council’s constitution and relevant scheme of delegation along with a copy of the authority.

Please note, if any page on this form is inactive for more than 20 minutes, the form will time out and you will have to start the form again so please make sure that you have all of the required information and documentation to hand before beginning this form.

Form requirements 

You will need to have the following information before you complete this form:

  • the relevant authorisation/approval supporting your request
  • approval from your corporate director if marking request as urgent
  • a copy of the existing contract/agreement and supporting or background documentation (it will cause delays if these documents are not uploaded with your form submission)
  • a detailed specification (for new SBC contract requests)
  • Advice from HR if a TUPE transfer of staff from either the council to the new provider/contractor OR from an existing provider/contractor to the new provider/contractor exists