BPP Law School is set to become the first Legal Practice Course (LPC) provider to offer the fast-track LPC to all students, according to its chief executive Peter Crisp.

The condensed course is currently available exclusively to students within the framework of the City LPC consortium, which comprises Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May.

From August 2011, however, the condensed course, which was created on a bespoke basis in 2009 for the City LPC firms, will be available to all students. Despite the shorter period spent on the course, the tuition fees will be the same as for the standard course (£12,500) The minimum entry requirement for the fast-track LPC will be a 2:1 degree.

Crisp (pictured) commented: ""Offering seven-month LPC programmes only to trainees can be seen as unfair and elitist – especially as the potential saving on living costs are particularly beneficial to self-funded students. At BPP we feel it is important to give all students who are capable of handling the workload a chance to choose between the fast-track or full length LPC, irrespective of whether they have secured a training contract or not."

The new fast-track LPC will not feature the same learning materials as the LPC designed for the City consortium; instead, it will feature content from the standard LPC without firm-specific aspects. The new programme will increase face-to-face training and see students coming through in two waves – one starting in February and the other in August.

The news comes three months after it was announced that BPP is to open up new branches in Cambridge, Newcastle and Liverpool in 2011.

BPP currently has six branches, having opened up in Birmingham and Bristol this year. The three new centres would take the leading law school up to a total of nine branches, one more than the College of Law. Each new BPP centre is expected to initially have between 40-60 LPC places.