For the Provision of Apprenticeship Training and Related Services

Contracts

• Contract 025644-2021-HOCS2b/00016/3-1 · Capita Business Services Ltd

  Signed

  13 Oct 2021

  Value

  £3,775,000

  Period

  24 Oct 2021 – 23 Oct 2023

  Status

  active

  • Change This existing Contract has been extended for two years until October 2023 under Regulation 72(b)(ii). This to facilitate the creation of a category strategy for apprenticeships to enable the assurance of best value for money and provision of fit for purpose arrangements that support the growth in this area of expenditure. The MOD has adopted a category management approach as part of the delivery of its commercial approach to enabling best value to be delivered in its areas of commercial activity. Apprenticeships is one of those and is part of a broader people resource overarching category. The work on the strategy has been prioritised and is scheduled for completion by Spring 2022. For this reason, MOD is simply not in a position to conduct a competitive tendering exercise at the moment, and will not be until the complete requirement has been fully scoped. To attempt to conduct a competitive tendering exercise at this time would not only thus be impracticable but would also mean that any consequent competitive procurement exercise would result in contracts that did not provide the full range of requirements required, offered disadvantageous terms to all bidders and crucially, would not provide the Authority with Best Value For Money. It very likely also, as has happened previously, that this would lead to a lack of engagement from the suppliers on any particular pan Government framework through which we intended to procure. However, in order to ensure that apprentices can still be onboarded until new contracts can be put in place, it is necessary to extend the current contract for a maximum of 2 years. The Contract however, can be terminated at any time during that period. It should be noted that the Cabinet Office is in the process of putting in place a new contract for the provision of apprenticeships that will be available to all government departments. This is due to be in place later this Autumn but will not be in place at the point at which the current Contract expires and while this CO option will be considered as part of the development of the new category strategy, not extending the current contract would result in there being no provision available under which to provide apprenticeships to the MOD in the areas covered. To proceed with a competitive procurement at this juncture will not only cover only a partial, and possibly scanty, part of the overall requirement but would also prevent potential bidders from gaining a perspective of the complete requirement and would also, in not providing Best Value For Money, most probably create a substantial duplication of costs and certainly considerable inconvenience on the part of MOD. This extension has therefore been placed to accommodate additional services by the original contractor, which have become necessary but were not included in the initial procurement, because a change of contractor cannot be made for economic or technical reasons in that MOD is not yet able to finalised it’s future category management strategy and therefore, undertake a new competitive procurement process and to do other than extend the existing Contract, would cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs for the contracting authority in that it would have no provider for these apprenticeships for the foreseeable future. This extension/modification does not exceed 50% of the original contract value., Need for additional works, services or supplies by the original contractor/concessionaire: Please see VII.2.1 (Description of the modifications).

Dispute resolution & review bodies

• Head Office Commercial ServicesMediation bodyReview body Glasgow