Provision of Apprenticeship Providers

Tender description

Kent Police and Essex Police are mindful to undertake a competition to procure Apprenticeship training providers for a range of roles within the service both Police specific and non-police specific. We are interested to know the level of interest from HEIs, Colleges, Academies, Vocational Schools and other institutes in providing such essential courses to our employees. The Public Sector Apprenticeship Levy Scheme first announced in November 2015 is intended to promote Apprenticeships within public-sector organisations and attract suitable service providers. Any such procurement required to interact with such establishments must however comply with EU Procurement Law. PS organisations will therefore be looking at innovative ways to deliver high quality and effective apprenticeships within strict budgetary constraints. For any competition undertaken, Providers will need to demonstrate their capabilities and previous experience in providing Apprenticeships in the Police market as well as ensuring they meet some of the pre-requisites necessary for inclusion within the scheme itself. As with any employer, the volume of Apprenticeships which will be required is very much dependent on the number of applicants for any post, however we have attempted to provide an estimate of our requirement (based on what we know today) for the different business areas. We would therefore very much appreciate if you could respond to the questionnaire which is on our e-tendering portal in order for us to establish the level of procurement exercise which may be required. Whilst informal, we will be looking to close off this pre-market engagement by Friday 27th October at 12:00 to allow us to collate responses and strategize our future requirements. Please note expressing an interest or otherwise would not guarantee any future involvement should a procurement exercise be undertaken but it will give us the opportunity to better target communications about our requirements going forward. The intention is, where possible, to have the apprenticeship training delivered at police premises; however it may be agreeable to have some of the training delivered at provider premises (subject to locations within a reasonable vicinity to our Police HQs in Maidstone and Chelmsford) or even via distance learning methods. Security checks of personnel delivering the training at police premises will therefore be necessary. Security vetting of said personnel currently costs in the region of £70 and the expectation is this cost will be met by the training provider. Please register to https://kentpolice.bravosolution.co.uk to complete the questionnaire which can be found under project 17321 - Provision of Apprenticeship Providers.