Find a TenderPast planning noticePreliminary market engagement notice
Published 2 Apr 2025, 22:39 BST

Official UK procurement notice

Flexible Learning and Support Services for Children and Young People

Official notice

Authority: Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Local council)

ServicesAbove thresholdConcessionSME suitableVCSE suitable
Concession value (operator's revenue)Value not publishedoperator revenue, not the authority's budget
Tender notice expected Date not publishedfrom the planned procurement notice
Contract term 5 yrsends 31 Mar 2031 · starts 1 Apr 2026

What is being bought

Published requirement description

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council is considering commissioning a Flexible Learning and Support Services Framework. Our aim is to provide a varied offer of services to our children and young people to support their education and/or Special Educational Needs & Disabilities. These services will be both statutory and non-statutory but provide enhanced levels of support to our young people at the right time and to meet particular need.

The key aim of this framework is to provide local authority colleagues with a diverse selection of suppliers to draw upon, in order to provide our CYP with a wide range of provisions to support and enhance their learning, including services such as tutoring, mentoring, post 16 provision and online education platforms.

As part of the decision-making process, the authority is undertaking a soft market test. This gives potential providers and other stakeholders the opportunity to express their interests and feed in their views about the potential service model and specification principles. The commissioners will use the information to appraise options and further develop the potential specification.

This process does not constitute a formal tender or other competitive bidding process and will not result in the letting of a Contract. The authority is using this process solely to test the market to gather information and ascertain the level of interest in this particular service. There are therefore no formal criteria which we will use to judge your responses, and it is not our intention to provide any feedback.

CPV: Education and training services · Social work services

The lotProcurement structure

single lot · no lot value published
Lot #1Planned 5 yrsSMEVCSE
Contract period: 1 Apr 2026 – 31 Mar 2031 (5 yrs)
Delivery: West MidlandsEligibility: SME eligibleVCSE eligible

Procedure terms & legal framework

From the official record
Legal basis
UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
Procurement category
Services
Notice status
Past planning notice
Procurement threshold
Above threshold (FTS publication)
Regulatory regime
Concession
Commercial structure
Stand-alone contract (no framework)
Competition type
Competitive procedure
GPA / WTO covered
Unspecified in notice
Recurring procurement
Unspecified in notice
First published
2 Apr 2025, 22:39 BST
Last source update
2 Apr 2025, 22:39 BST
Authority reference
25013
FTS notice number
2025/S 000-012650
Latest notice
Preliminary market engagement notice (UK2)
Classification (CPV)
Education and training servicesSocial work services
Delivery area
West Midlands (UKG36)
Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-04fc52 Find a Tender

How it was run

Official notice
Submission deadline
—

Timeline

2 Apr 2025 → 1 Apr 2026 · 3 dates
  1. Planning notice published
    2 Apr 2025, 22:39 BST
  2. Market engagement
    16 Apr 2025, 23:59 BST

    A questionnaire has been created. The questionnaire is available on our portal:

    www.in-tendhost.co.uk/blackcountryportal/a… ↗

    The information gathered from this exercise will help shape future proposals including any potential tendering process and associated service specification. For the avoidance of doubt, this stage of the project is not part of a formal procurement process and the Council is not committing, at this stage, to carrying out such a process.

    Participation or non-participation in the pre-procurement market engagement process shall not prevent any supplier participating in a potential future procurement, nor is it intended that any information supplied as part of the pre-procurement process shall place any supplier at an advantage in a potential procurement process. Participation in the pre-procurement market engagement procurement process will be at each supplier's own cost. No expense in responding to this process will be reimbursed by the Council. This is not a call for competition.

  3. Contract starts211 days ago
    1 Apr 2026, 00:00 BST

Notice history

1 event · 1 release on Find a Tender
  1. Preliminary market engagement notice published
    2 Apr 2025, 22:39 BST
    UK2

Commercial outcome & contract awards

Pipeline notice
Awards (0)
No award published
Contracts (0)
No contract published
Bid statistics
No aggregate bid statistics published

Contracting authority & participating public bodies

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

Contracting authorityPublic authority - sub-central government GB-PPON: PWYJ-3537-GLBW Council House, Priory Road, Dudley, West Midlands, DY1 1HFContact email

Official documents & specifications (1)

Official links; attachments are not copied

Notices published for this procedure