Health and social work services

Tender description

Essex County Council (the Council) is seeking to procure a framework of providers to deliver Day Opportunities services for adults with disabilities/physical or sensory impairments and older people as further described in the Service Specification published with the tender documents. The Council wants the services to support adults through a range of purposeful activities outside of their own home, and seeks to increase their independence and confidence within their own community, as well as enabling a break for unpaid carers. The Day Opportunities service in Essex will support the Council in achieving its strategic aims in relation to the cohort of adult these services are gears towards. Providers are required to embed the Council’s “Good Lives Approach”, embracing the Care Act principles of ‘Prevent, Reduce, Delay’ and changes the dependency culture of assessing for services to an approach building upon an Adult’s assets and the support networks they have in their local communities. The services fall within ‘social and other specific services’ within the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the total value of the framework will exceed the current threshold. The procurement of this framework is therefore subject to and has been designed to be compliant with the ‘light touch’ regime under the Regulations. The Council’s estimates the value of this framework to be in the range of £80-90 million pounds (GBP) over the four year framework, based on current and forecast expenditure for day opportunity services. The Council is running a one stage tender process that will be open for 60 days from date this contract notice is published, for bidders to respond to the Invitation to Tender (ITT). The bidder is to note that the award criteria for the framework is based on 100 % quality and in order to be awarded a place on the framework it must score a ‘Pass’ on all relevant questions which would entail demonstrating that it meets all minimum quality requirements detailed in any question in the ITT. If a bidder fails to score a ‘Pass’ on any questions: i.the Council will, depending on the nature of the question which has been failed, be entitled but not obliged to offer the bidder a conditional award onto the framework, for example demonstrating self-cleaning on any failed criteria; or ii.where the Council reasonably considers that a conditional award is not appropriate, the bidder’s bid will be failed in its entirety and the bidder will not be offered a place on the framework. The conditions relating to a compliant bid are set out in the Council’s ITT and the Bidder Guidance. No pricing information is required in the Invitation to Tender. The framework will run for 4 years in accordance with the Framework Agreement. The Council will also re-open the framework to allow new bidders or bidders who previously failed the opportunity to join the framework up to three times a year in accordance with the terms of the Framework Agreement. Placements will be made via a call-off procedure, with a call-off contract being awarded to a provider which represents the most economically advantageous bid i.e. lowest overall total package price (session costs plus transport costs) from compliant bids as defined in the Framework Agreement. Price is not the only award criterion at Call-Off and all criteria are stated only in the procurement documents. The Council will be entitled but not obliged to extend the duration of a call-off contract in accordance with the terms of the call-off contract. The appointment of the Provider as an approved supplier on the Framework Providers List has been done on the basis of the Provider as an organisation and not in relation to any individual day centres or premises from which such Provider operates or may operate. Further information also provided in Additional Information.