Administrative services of agencies

Tender description

The LGSS Revenues and Benefits service current consists of 3 local authority sites, Northampton Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council and Horsham District Council and is looking for long term partners for resilience and peak workload support across all operations. The service is looking to work with a partner who can provide officers that have the necessary experience and knowledge of the governing legislation so they can perform their duties with minimal training and supervision. The main issue and reason for the market testing is the impact inaccuracy has on the LA error figures and the large financial penalties local authorities face if they go over threshold, this is usually heightened in periods where remote support is needed because there is a particular crisis or staff shortage placing pressures on the individual assessment officers. The LGSS Revenues and Benefits service current consists of 3 local authority sites, Northampton Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council and Horsham District Council and is looking for long term partners for resilience and peak workload support across all operations. The service is looking to work with a partner who can provide officers that have the necessary experience and knowledge of the governing legislation so they can perform their duties with minimal training and supervision. Officers deployed on the contract must be capable of the delivery of all relevant aspects of revenues and benefits services to include but not exclusively: — Call handling and resolution, — General claim / account processing, — Appeals, — Complaints, — More specialised technical services such as Subsidy and Quality Assurance. There will be an expectation for the provision of significant resources where possible will be timetabled into each financial year and ad hoc requirements at short notice where resource availability will be negotiated. Issues The main issue and reason for the market testing is the impact inaccuracy has on the LA error figures and the large financial penalties local authorities face if they go over threshold, this is usually heightened in periods where remote support is needed because there is a particular crisis or staff shortage placing pressures on the individual assessment officers. LGSS is looking to test options that encourages the suppliers to be actively involved and responsible for the accuracy of the work of its employees. It is intended that there will be some degree of financial compensation to the local Authority should the provider fail to meet the agreed standards. Questions LGSS has highlighted 3 options that are under consideration and is looking to gain some feedback and market response although any alternative ideas will be looked at with equal merit. There is the potential that a combination of options will eventually be used as part of the full procurement exercise. This will be considered alongside the desire to avoid lengthy and time consuming contract management. For the purposes of all the scenarios it is assumed that the error identified is not disputed by either party. 1) In the event of an error the supplier would rework the case free of charge and refund the contract the cost of the original transaction; 2) The LA would retain a percentage of the monthly transaction fees for a set time period after an agreed period the retained monies would only be released should the supplier meet agreed accuracy targets (based on LA checking requirements); 3) The Supplier would be targeted to meet the 0,48 % LA error threshold for the value overpayments their officers process failure to meet the threshold would incur the same Percentage penalties that the LA face on the total overpaid HB. Any other scheme the provider has with another LA that can be demonstrated as meeting the incentive criteria. The LGSS Revenues and Benefit service would welcome comment specifically on the above points but any other suggestions or scenarios would be welcome before we move forward with the full procurement exercise. Kindly send your suggestions through Pro-contract messaging function. We are particularly interested in the areas that would encourage your participation in the procurement exercise and those that would stop you from bidding for the work. An expression of interest in this soft market test exercise will not automatically entitle involvement in any future procurement exercise. The subsequent procurement will be advertised separately and all providers wanting to participate will need to respond to the procurement advertisement when published. The Authority is not liable for any costs, expenses or fees incurred by any party participating in the soft market test exercise. Please note that the deadline for the soft market test responses will be 10.8.2018.