Other community, social and personal services

Tender description

In addition to its current internal approved premises expansion programme, the MoJ wish to conduct early engagement with the market to explore opportunities for the delivery of approved premises of which there are already 100 operating across England and Wales – 11 of those are operated by the VCSE sector and the rest are operated by HM Prison and Probation Service/National Probation Service. This is a very early exploratory call to the market with no commitment to tender at this time. We are looking for ways to expand the current provision of bed spaces across the AP estate throughout England and Wales. There will likely be demand in the near future, for both male and female APs. This early call to the market is to gauge the appetite for the delivery of this provision as well as to identify opportunities and ways to overcome potential challenges. The MoJ welcomes discussions with interested suppliers and intends to hold further events to explore ideas on divergent delivery models. The current approved premises model is delivered both in-house and by long standing, third sector suppliers. The authority is considering how it can develop and/or expand the provision of these services in the future given the market conditions in which we operate. Approved premises are designed to ensure that high-risk and complex offenders receive residential supervision in the community, and additional rehabilitative support following release from prison. They aim to support a safe transition from custody into the community, whilst providing a valuable level of public protection. The provision ensures those adult male and female offenders who pose a risk of harm to the public are closely supervised and monitored for between 3-12 months after release from prison and supported to find appropriate longer-term accommodation. They are supervised by the National Probation Service (‘NPS’). APs are currently made up of residential units ranging from 10 to 44 offender places offering an enhanced level of supervision and management in the community such as staffing 24 hours per day, an overnight curfew, and monitoring inside and outside of the accommodation with CCTV. APs also engage with and provide interventions to offenders to enable them to address their problems, build on their strengths and support desistence from offending and effective rehabilitation into the community. We welcome engagement with the market to discuss the innovation, social value and specialist services for example substance misuse and psychological/psychologically informed services that could be provided to discrete groups of Service Users as well as options for on-going support and move-on accommodation.