Hampshire Supporting People Procurement and Tendering process

Procurement Process

Our procurement procedure is based on the need to ensure adequate protection and service continuity to the vulnerable people who access Supporting People (SP) funded services, and on ensuring value for money, customer focussed quality services for Hampshire County Council, whilst at the same time offering a degree of security and continuity for service providers.

The procurement process itself is divided into two parts. Firstly, the process establishes the competency and fitness of the prospective organisation to hold a contract with Hampshire County Council (HCC) by inclusion on an ‘Register of Accredited Providers’, in accordance with Council Standing Orders . The SP team then assess the capacity and ability of potential providers to deliver a specific service and procure them accordingly.

Applications to join the Register of Accredited Providers are invited annually by means of public advertisements on appropriate websites (HCC procurement,Communities & Local Government SP, Hampshire SP and in local and trade press (Hampshire Chronicle, Community Care, Inside Housing). Additionally current providers of care services in Hampshire have been invited to apply.

Applicants for inclusion are then assessed on the following five criteria:

Financial viability

Competent administrative procedures

Effective employment practices

Robust management procedures

Track record & competence

Each of the above is assessed against a series of published criteria. Organisations can apply to be ‘passported’ through one or more of the above criteria on the basis of national standards identified as acceptable by CLG.

Once accepted onto the Register of Accredited Providers, an organisation remains so until 2012 and then will need to be re-accredited every three years.It will be notified of all services to be tendered by Hampshire SP, including those where support and care are to be jointly provided.

Contracts for individual SP services, including those for both support and care, are issued for a fixed period, normally of three years. Each contract contains aservice specification which sets out the outcome targets and performance standards against which the service will be measured.

During the life of the contract each service is subject to a rigorous process of quarterly performance monitoring against the set targets. In addition service quality is assessed annually through a nationally developed Quality Assessment Framework. Before the expiry of each contract a more in depth review is conducted where all services are assessed against the following five criteria:

Strategic Relevance

Demand & Need as evidenced over the live of the contract

Quality delivered during the life of the contract

Performance as assessed over the life of the contract

Value for money

Once a service has been reviewed, one of the options set out below will be adopted:

1.Where, having applied the published guidance, a service is assessed as fully meeting all of the above criteria, and the intention is to re-commission the service as it is, a new three year contract is offered to the existing provider. This would be an exception to the Standing Order requirement to competitively tender the service, and approval for such single tender awards of contract is sought on the basis that this option represents the best value for money following a service review which was based on having obtained the views of service users.

2. Where the strategic relevance of a service, or demand or need for a service are not demonstrated the service is de-commissioned and the resources directed to meet other areas of need.

3. Where a service provider does not meet an acceptable level of performance with regard to quality, performance or value for money the service is advertised for open tender to all providers on the Approved Register of Providers.

4.Where two or more services are merged together the service is advertised for open tender to all providers on the Approved Register of Providers.

5. Where it is proposed to substantially change the nature of a service it is advertised for open tender to all providers on the Approved Register of Providers.

6. In other circumstances where no service of a particular type has been subject to an open tender HCC will periodically test the market through an open tender exercise.

Tender Process

Once it has been decided that a service will need to be tendered, and a draft timetable agreed, all organisations that are on the SP Register of AccreditedProviders are notified and invited to express an interest in tendering for it. Notification is usually made by email butproviders are invited to use Hampshire County Council’s e-tendering tool called In-Tend. This can be accessed via the following link:-

In order to express an interest and be invited to tender, providers will need to register their company details by following the guidance (links to this are in the procurement section of the SP website)

Applicants usually have 2 weeks to express their interest. An Invitation to tender is issued via In-Tend to all interested providers (providing they are on the SP Register of Accredited Providers) after the deadline for expressing interest has passed. The tender pack will normally include:-

  • guidance notes
  • service specification
  • draft contract
  • pricing return and on line questionnaire
  • TUPE information if applicable (once a confidentiality agreement has been returned)
  • any other information that may be useful to the tenderer

Theaward criteriaand weightings aredetailed in the guidance notes and any additional notes to aid tenderers are contained in the on line questionnaire.

Setting of award criteria and their weightings are agreed in pre-tender meetings by a panel consisting of members of the SP team and other stakeholders, for instance district housing managers and adult services staff.

Any questions about the process are welcomed from providers via the correspondence facility in In-Tend, and are usually answered within 2 days. Notification of these is always given to all interested parties at the same time. The closing date for questions is usually at least a week before the deadline for tender submissions.

The deadline for submission of tendersby uploading via In-Tend will be at least 4 weeks from the date documents are issued to providers.

It is extremely important that organisations adhere to all instructions contained in the guidance notes, and any subsequent directives. Failure to do so could result in tenders being discounted.

A panel will evaluate each tender. It usually includes the people that were involved in the pre-tender meetings. Each criteria of each tender is evaluated according to the published award criteria and scored according to the system and weighting outlined in the guidance.

Once all bids have been evaluated,a number of providers will be invited to interview according to the conditions specified in the guidance. If no provider reaches a minimum standard of 50% of the available marks the SP team reserve the right not to proceed any further with the tender.

Providers will normally be given at least 2 weeks notice if they are invited to interview. They will either be asked a series of clarification questions based on their written submission, or questions that have previously been notified in the Invitation to Tender. The interview panel will consist of the same representatives that evaluated the bids, if possible, as well as a member of ROCC and a service user.

The highest scoring provider will be offered the contract. This does not take place, however, until all providers who submitted a tender have been notified of the outcome, which will include how their scores compared to the winning bid, and a brief written feedback about the benefits of their bid. Providers are given 10 days during which they may challenge the intention to award the contract. They may also request further feedback about the evaluation of their tender but this will not differ from that already given in their written notification.

Once the standstill period has expired, the contract will be formally offered to the successful bidder.