Emily Heard Partner

I am head of the Procurement, Competition and State Aid teams.  My practice involves dealing with all aspects of contentious and non-contentious procurement law, the majority of which are complex judicial review High Court actions. These include procurement challenges and other statutory challenges. 

My team and I are well-known for our involvement in leading, high-profile procurement cases in the public, private and third sector, and our experience stretches across a range of different markets.

I frequently advise on procurement issues in the health sector, challenges when reconfiguring services (including for local authorities) and challenges to large projects such as energy from waste plants. My particular expertise is litigation (and how to avoid it) arising from procurement, consultation, and Equality Act 2010 obligations.

Publications

I have recently written an article entitled EU Regulation – Steel Yourself for the Procurement Outsourcing Journal and for LexisNexis entitled NHS Procurement Knife Fight.

Seminars & training

I teach the litigation module for the Law of Public Procurement (Masters) course at Nottingham Law School alongside Professor Sue Arrowsmith.

I recently spoke at the University of Nottingham’s Global Devolution Conference and at the Corporate Council Exchange and APMP conferences.

Career Highlights

• R (Fair Crime Contract Alliance) v Lord Chancellor - included within The Lawyer magazine’s top 20 cases of 2016 and described by the High Court as the most complex public procurement dispute ever brought.
• Bristol Missing Link v Bristol City Council [2015] EWHC 876 (TCC) – described by the High Court in a subsequent judgment as a "paradigm case" whereby the automatic suspension was kept in place in favour of our client (a landmark decision). Following the judgment, my team and I were tasked with finding a solution to the dispute between the parties, which resulted in a contractually agreed re-evaluation of the parties' tenders by the Council. As a result, our client was judged to have submitted the winning tender.
• Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust v NHS Swale Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley ([2016] EWHC 1393 (TCC)) - this case is significant in relation to whether damages are an adequate remedy for public bodies.