Accounting, auditing and fiscal services

Tender description

Provision of restructuring services for the Department of Education: The Government is implementing a new insolvency regime for further education and sixth form colleges (“FE colleges”) in England and Wales, introduced by the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 (the 2017 Act), which received Royal Assent on 27.4.2017. The regime will apply aspects of normal corporate insolvency law to the current 266 colleges that are statutory corporations. Due to the change in legislation and the implementation of the new insolvency regime the DfE are adopting a standard practice of commissioning an Independent Business Review (IBR) of FE colleges when necessary. The IBR would look at the financial, educational and estates position of the college and would set this in the context of local and/or regional market and economic conditions [e.g. combined authority, local authority, the local enterprise partnership (LEP) and other stakeholders] to consider cost-effective restructuring solutions. The driver for delivering a DfE specific IP contract is to meet the need for insolvency advice required as a result of the insolvency regime. However, there is overlap in the IP skills needed across the department and the opportunity is taken to open the contract to other areas of the DfE to secure IP skills and advice. Academy trusts may require access to insolvency advice. In order to support department interventions and to implement the insolvency regime as intended it is necessary to put in place the infrastructure required to allow financially distressed education providers to be assessed and, if necessary, managed through insolvency. Therefore, we are procuring the following services: — services of restructuring professionals to conduct Independent Business Review (IBRs), — services of licenced Insolvency Practitioners (IP) to provide supplementary activity. If the outcome of an IBR recommends that the education provider should enter an insolvency process, we may also require: — services of licenced Insolvency Practitioners who can be appointed as Education Administrators. All suppliers must be able to offer all of the above services and it is a mandatory requirement that all suppliers can provide the services of Insolvency Practitioners. In order to fulfil the above business needs, we will undertake a procurement exercise to establish a panel agreement for Insolvency Practitioners. A full specification of requirements is available within the tender documentation.