Richmond Day Services · UK public procurement notice

The contract is being treated as subject to the Procurement Act 2023 to ensure transparency. However, the Council consider its nature is that of a mutual co-investment community partnership agreement for a common public benefit purpose, not a free-standing service contract. Therefore, the Council consider that it is exempt from the obligation to publish a tender and conduct a competitive tendering process on the basis that there is an absence of competition for technical reasons, including the following: embedded local community engagement and collaboration across services are essential requirements to meet assessed needs. Providers with those potential characteristics and capabilities were invited to extensive pre-commissioning engagement. As a result of that pre- commissioning engagement the Council's officers have judged that only the providers selected are able and willing to co-invest bringing mixed funding models, work in partnership and co-design, co-develop and deliver the required service transformation; and that for these Official precise requirements there are no reasonable alternatives.

The Council has reached this conclusion on the basis that detailed, several stage pre procurement market engagement demonstrated a lack of other suppliers expressing interest to meet the Council's specific requirements, that the intention was to involve as many providers as were interested, able and willing and that the community partnership commissioning approach was adopted, because previous competitive procurements have not been successful in leading to contracts with satisfactory, able and willing suppliers, indicating there is no functional competitive market. The conclusion of the Council, from the pre-commissioning engagement process, is that direct award is appropriate and that adopting a competitive tender process, in the circumstances, would be artificial and involve disproportionate time and cost.