Following last week’s front- page story, the COI announced that all second-stage applications will now be considered.
Agency heads were frustra¬ted after being told to submit for the second stage before knowing whether they had passed the first stage.
But COI director of PR Pauline Hughes said this week: ‘We are making a firm commitment that all agencies’ responses for stage one and two will be fully evaluated before we determine if their application is successful.’
The COI will now aggregate the scores from the two stages.
