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Healthwatch Essex Core Service

Essex County Council

This public procurement record has 1 release in its history.

Planning

14 Aug 2026 at 09:31

UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice
Summary of the contracting process

Essex County Council is planning to commission the Healthwatch Essex Core Service, a local health and social care service for Essex residents. The provider will act as an independent champion for people using health and social care, gathering residents’ experiences and ensuring their views influence service improvement. The scope includes public involvement, community feedback, monitoring the quality of local care, advice on accessing services, reports and recommendations to commissioners and providers, and intelligence for Healthwatch England. The service will work collaboratively across the health and care system while remaining demonstrably independent. The main category is health and social work services (CPV 85000000), delivered across Essex.

This procurement is at the planning stage and is currently a soft market test, not an invitation to tender. Essex County Council expects to use market feedback to refine the scope, delivery model and procurement arrangements, subject to governance approval. A soft market test response is due by 17:00 on 4 September 2026 through the council’s e-sourcing platform. The proposed service is expected to run from 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2029, although the final duration and timetable will be confirmed in the future tender notice. The estimated value is £656,000 excluding VAT, or £787,200 including VAT. One planned lot is identified, and participation is considered suitable for SMEs and VCSEs.

The future service will suit organisations with experience delivering Healthwatch, community engagement, health and social care advocacy, or comparable independent public-interest services. Prospective providers should be able to meet the statutory responsibilities under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, including collecting and representing residents’ views, monitoring local services, producing evidence-based reports and recommendations, advising people about access to care, and supplying intelligence to Healthwatch England. The council is particularly interested in approaches that reach diverse and under-represented communities, produce representative insight, demonstrate clear outcomes, and connect resident experience with service improvement and Adult Social Care priorities. Providers should also be prepared to offer innovative delivery models while preserving independence and working constructively with system partners.

How relevant is this notice?

Notice Information

Notice Title

Healthwatch Essex Core Service

Notice Description

Essex County Council ("the Council") is undertaking a Soft Market Test (SMT) exercise to inform future commissioning considerations for the Healthwatch Essex Core Service. It may be worth noting that the existing contract for this service is due to end in March 2027. The Council has a statutory responsibility to commission a local Healthwatch service under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Local Healthwatch acts as the independent champion for people using health and social care services, ensuring that residents' voices are heard and used to inform service improvement across the health and care system. Please note that pending governance approval, any newly commissioned service is expected to commence from April 2027 and is due to be fully funded via an external grant funding arrangement. At this stage, no decision has been made regarding future commissioning arrangements. The purpose of this exercise is to engage with the market and gain insight into prospective providers' capability, capacity to deliver the proposed service alongside seeking their views on the potential delivery models including any innovative approaches or alternative options based on their experience of delivering similar services. The Council's ambition is for the Essex Healthwatch service to be an independent, influential and impactful voice for Essex residents, ensuring that feedback from local people leads to meaningful change across health and social care services. The Council wishes to maintain a service that is demonstrably independent whilst working collaboratively with partners across the health and care system. The council is particularly interested in models that: * Deliver statutory responsibilities effectively and independently. * Increase engagement with diverse and under-represented communities * Ensure insight and feedback are representative of Essex residents. * Demonstrate clear impact and outcomes from engagement activity. * Strengthen the link between resident experience, service improvement and Adult Social Care priorities. All statutory responsibilities must be delivered by providers, ensuring public involvement, community feedback collection, and service improvement advocacy under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. These statutory responsibilities are: 1. Promoting and supporting the involvement of local people in the commissioning, provision and scrutiny of local care services. 2. Enabling local people to monitor the standard of provision of local care services and whether and how local care services could and ought to be improved. 3. Obtaining the views of local people regarding their needs for, and experiences of, local care services and importantly to make these views known. 4. Making reports and recommendations about how local care services could or ought to be improved. These should be directed to commissioners and providers of care services, and people responsible for managing or scrutinising local care services, and shared with Healthwatch England. 5. Providing advice and information about access to local care services so choices can be made about local care services. 6. Formulating views on the standard of provision and whether and how the local care services could and ought to be improved, and to share these views with Healthwatch England. 7. Making recommendations to Healthwatch England to advise the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to conduct special reviews or investigations (or, where the circumstances justify doing so, making such recommendations direct to the CQC); and to make recommendations to Healthwatch England to publish reports about particular issues. 8. Providing Healthwatch England with intelligence and insight to enable it to perform effectively. Please note that the Council reserves the right to refine the scope of this proposed procurement following the market engagement process. In addition, please note that this procurement remains subject to governance approval. Therefore, the Council will confirm the final scope of the procurement, including but not limited to, the contract duration and value alongside the confirmed procurement timetable in the corresponding Tender Notice following the conclusion of the requisite governance process. In addition, please note that the contracting authority for this service is Essex County Council and any Successor Body meaning one or more entities which assumes any of the Council's functions (as applicable) as a result of Local Government Reform (LGR). Such successor body or bodies may be, without limitation, a local authority, a combined authority, a combined county authority, a strategic authority or any other status determined pursuant to the Devolution and LGR Legislation. In addition, please note that further details of the Council's commissioning intentions for this service and a suite of soft market test questions can be located via the Council's e-sourcing platform, NEPO:OPEN: https://www.open-uk.org/opportunities Please note that you will need to undertake a registration process to secure a user account to access the aforementioned briefing document via OPEN. However, please be advised that the registration process is free of charge and will also provide access to any forthcoming procurement opportunities which Essex County Council issues in due course. In addition, please be advised that this deadline for responding to this soft market test will be 17:00 on Friday 4th September 2026 and all responses must be submitted via the online questionnaire functionality within OPEN. Likewise, if you require any clarification regarding the briefing document, please use the messaging functionality within OPEN.

Planning Information

Please note that a document containing further details of the Council's commissioning intentions for this service and a suite of soft market test questions can be located via: https://www.open-uk.org/opportunities If you filter the list of contracting authorities to select "Essex County Council" and use the project title as the search term " A027PA Healthwatch Essex Core Service", you should be able to locate and access the soft market test opportunity, noting that a document which includes the market feedback questions has been attached within the online questionnaire. Alternatively, if you would like to search via the project reference number, please use: "# OPEN20261795 ". If you experience any technical system issues regarding this soft market test, please contact NEPO's helpdesk via the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of OPEN's homepage: https://open-uk.org / Please note that you will need to undertake a registration process to secure a user account to access the aforementioned soft market test via OPEN. However, please be advised that the registration process is free of charge and will also provide access to any forthcoming procurement opportunities which Essex County Council issues in due course. In addition, please be advised that this deadline for responding to this soft market test is 17:00 on Friday 4th September 2026 and all responses must be submitted via the online questionnaire functionality within OPEN. Likewise, if you require any clarification regarding this soft market test, please use the correspondence functionality within OPEN. For the avoidance of any further doubt, please note that OPEN uses ProClass to classify procurement opportunities instead of Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) contrary to the functionality in this notice. Therefore, the opportunity within OPEN has been prepared using the following ProClass codes which represent the closest match to the CPV code which this notice is based on: 321000 - Social Community Care Supplies & Services - Adult Finally, please note that the specified engagement deadline within this notice relates to the submission deadline regarding responses to the soft market test only.

Notice Details

Publication & Lifecycle

Open Contracting ID
ocds-h6vhtk-06e42a
Publication Source
Find A Tender Service
Latest Notice
https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/077498-2026
Current Stage
Planning
All Stages
Planning

Procurement Classification

Notice Type
UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice
Procurement Type
Standard
Procurement Category
Services
Procurement Method
Not Specified
Procurement Method Details
Not specified
Tender Suitability
SME, VCSE
Awardee Scale
Not specified

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

CPV Divisions

85 - Health and social work services

CPV Codes

85000000 - Health and social work services

Notice Value(s)

Tender Value
£656,000 £500K-£1M
Lots Value
Not specified
Awards Value
Not specified
Contracts Value
Not specified

Notice Dates

Publication Date
14 Aug 20261 weeks ago
Submission Deadline
Not specified
Future Notice Date
4 Sep 20262 weeks to go
Award Date
Not specified
Contract Period
1 Apr 2027 - 31 Mar 2029 2-3 years
Recurrence
Not specified

Notice Status

Tender Status
Planning
Lots Status
Planning
Awards Status
Not Specified
Contracts Status
Not Specified

Buyer & Supplier

Contracting Authority (Buyer)

Main Buyer
Essex County Council
Contact Name
Available with D3 Tenders Premium →
Contact Email
Available with D3 Tenders Premium →
Contact Phone
Available with D3 Tenders Premium →

Buyer Location

Locality
CHELMSFORD
Postcode
CM1 1QH
Postcode Area
Chelmsford
Country
England
Major Region (ITL 1)
TLH East (England)
Basic Region (ITL 2)
TLH3 Essex
Small Region (ITL 3)
TLH36 Heart of Essex
Delivery Location
TLH3 Essex
Local Authority
Chelmsford
Electoral Ward
Moulsham and Central
Westminster Constituency
Chelmsford

Further Information

Notice Documents

Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS)

View full OCDS Record for this contracting process

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The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) is a framework designed to increase transparency and access to public procurement data in the public sector. It is widely used by governments and organisations worldwide to report on procurement processes and contracts.

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