Report to:	Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health
Date of meeting:	16th August 2021
By:	Director of Adult Social Care
Title:	Housing Related Floating Support Services – Contract Award
Purpose:	To seek approval from the Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health to award the contract, for Housing Related Floating Support Services, to the preferred bidder after completion of a competitive tendering process

Lead Member is recommended to:

 

1.    Agree the contract award for Housing Related Floating Support to the preferred bidder (Bidder A) as set out in paragraph 3.1; and

2.   delegate authority to the Director of Adult Social Care to take all necessary actions to give effect to the implementation of the above recommendation

 

1.            Background

1.1          A key strategic objective for East Sussex County Council (ESCC) and statutory partners is to support people to live independently and safely in their own homes. Stable housing, financial independence and supportive community networks are fundamental for people to thrive and achieve good health and wellbeing.

1.2          The tender sought to combine the existing Older People and Working Age Adults Floating Support contracts into a single, needs-led, countywide service, with a Strategic Partner working with ESCC and other agencies to continuously adapt the service model to meet changing needs over the lifetime of this five-year contract. There is also provision to extend the contract for a further five years.

1.3          The total annual contract value is £3,847,000. The value over the maximum lifetime of the contract, including the potential five year extension, is estimated at £38,470,000.

1.4          An Equality Impact Assessment was completed and signed off before the tender process. The proposals resulting from this are contained in Appendix 1, have been incorporated into the Service Specification and will be reviewed through the standard contract monitoring process.

1.5          The tender was published on 17 May 2021 on the UK Government’s ‘Find a Tender’ portal, with a submission deadline of 14 July 2021. The evaluation criteria were also published with the tender documents in accordance with Procurement Regulations. The tender was grouped into three Lots, as follows:

Lot 1 – A single Strategic Partner for the East Area of the County

Lot 2 – A single Strategic Partner for the West Area of the County

Lot 3 – A single Strategic Partner for the whole County.

1.6          Three tender submissions, all of which were for Lot 3, were received. The names of the three bidders are set out in an exempt report later on in the agenda.

 

 

 

 

2.            Tender Evaluation Process

2.1          Bidders were asked to provide further clarification to their responses where required and their scores re-evaluated if necessary.

2.2          The Evaluation Panel members comprised of representatives from ESCC Adult Social Care Commissioner, Children’s Services, Orbis Procurement and Hastings Borough Council, representing all five Borough and District Housing Authorities.   

2.3          The evaluation criteria were weighted as follows:

 

·         Financial Integrity 15%

·         Quality 85%, comprising the following:

 

 

2.4          Social Value was assessed based on the additional monetary value the Bidder commits to delivering during the life of the contract being tendered.  It is in addition to the Services required under the Specification and accounted for 5% of the total score and was measured using the Orbis Social Value Charter.

 

3.    Criteria for Contract Award

 

3.1          Once the Tenders had been evaluated and clarifications made, final scores were calculated, and a spreadsheet was completed showing the total scores for each Provider. The breakdown of scores is shown in the table below:

 

Bidder	QUALITY WEIGHTED SCORE (80%)	SOCIAL VALUE WEIGHTED SCORE (5%)	BID INTEGRITY WEIGHTED SCORE (15%)	TOTAL %
Bidder A (Preferred)	64.00	1.83	11.25	77.08
Bidder B	48.00	5.00	11.25	64.25
Bidder C	47.00	2.51	11.25	60.76

 

3.2          The preferred bidder has been appraised by ESCC Strategic Finance and the contract award would present no financial risk to the Council.

3.3          Bidders will be informed of the contract award decision on 23 August 2021 with a contract start date of 22 November 2021.

3.4          As the tender process is competitive, procurement regulations require that all bidders are informed of the tender outcome simultaneously and have the opportunity to review this, and to raise any concerns, during a standstill period. The award of contract cannot therefore be confirmed until the end of that standstill period and it could be problematic in terms of process and reputation to make public the winning bidder’s identity before that point.

 

 

 

4.    Conclusion and Recommendation

4.1          The outcome of the competitive tendering process identified a clear leader, which scored equal to or higher than the others in all criteria other than Social Value. Therefore, the unanimous recommendation of the Evaluation Panel is to award the contract to the Bidder A.  

 

MARK STAINTON

Director of Adult Social Care

 

Contact Officers:

Angela Yphantides, Strategic Commissioner, Angela.Yphantides@eastsussex.gov.uk

Tamsin Peart, Strategic Commissioner,Tamsin.Peart@eastsusex.gov.uk           

 

Background documents:

None