--- title: "Direct Payment Monitoring Tool" ocid: "ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2" canonical_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2" markdown_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2.md" json_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2.json" source: "Contracts Finder" current_stage: "Planning" buyer: "ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL" published: "2025-02-14" --- # Direct Payment Monitoring Tool Buyer: ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL Current stage: Planning OCID: ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2 [View canonical contract page](https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2) [Download OCDS JSON](https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2.json) ## Summary Essex County Council is in the planning stage of procuring a "Direct Payment Monitoring Tool" within the financial and insurance services industry category. This procurement focuses on developing a software solution that leverages open banking technology to streamline the monitoring of Direct Payments. The primary location for this procurement is the East of England, UK. A significant milestone in this process is the engagement end date on 10th March 2025. Initial documents, including an early engagement notice and a feasibility study, were published on 14th February 2025. The feasibility study invites interested parties to participate in an Early Market Engagement Questionnaire, ensuring confidentiality for all responses. This tender offers substantial opportunities for businesses, particularly SMEs and those in the financial-tech sector, to collaborate with Essex County Council. Companies that develop secure banking systems, data services, or software compliance with standards like ISO 27001/Cyber Essentials Plus are well-suited for this project. The pilot phase of the initiative provides a unique opportunity for businesses to showcase their technology's effectiveness in addressing the council's requirements, potentially leading to further procurement in managing over 1000 dedicated bank accounts. This project emphasises data security and compliance, paving the way for innovative firms to contribute valuable solutions in public care and financial monitoring. ## Notice Essex County Council (ECC) are seeking a software solution that utilises the open banking technology to make monitoring of Direct Payments within dedicated bank accounts easier for the Direct Payment Recipient and ECC. ECC currently make Direct payments to around 3000 people each month. The Direct Payment (in line with the Care Act (2014) is a payment to allow the person to commission their own care and support. Of these 3000 Direct Payments (DP) there are 1,000 people who receive the funds into a bank account. ECC's DP agreement sets out that this must be a dedicated account for their direct payment only (i.e. no other payments are made into this account). As well as having a statutory duty to ensure people have their unmet assessed needs met under the Care Act (2014), ECC has a fiduciary duty to proportionately monitor these accounts to ensure the funds are being used to meet the need and not being misappropriated. This process is currently very manual and relies on DP recipients sending ECC's monitoring team copies of bank statements. This is very time consuming and inefficient, thus a new solution is required. A pilot is planned to enable ECC's DP Monitoring Team to have easier access to the data they need to review individual dedicated bank accounts that hold people's Direct Payment (DP). This will initially be commissioned as a test and learn with a small sample of approximately 30 - 50 accounts to test the benefits of the approach for 6 months. If successful, ECC may look to introduce this technology with over 1000 dedicated bank accounts currently held by DP recipients following a further procurement. The following requirements are necessary: * A process that allows people to consent to ECC having access to reports of transactions taking place in their bank account. * The technology should enable access to information held on the dedicated bank accounts for the purpose of proportionate reviews. * The system should be able to clearly identify credits going in such as funds from ECC and the DP recipient's assessed charge contribution to the account * The system should also be able to identify credits paid out to agencies or Personal Assistants employed to give care and support as per the support plan outcomes * The system should be able to provide exception reporting to ECC when for example o cash withdrawals take place o Payments for utilities, groceries or gambling take place o The recipients expected assessed charge is not paid in to the account o No payments have been made out of the account * The banking system should be able to drill down were necessary to identify payments going out, to whom, the amount using identifiable data and not just a reference number * The data must be stored securely within the UK or EU meeting ISO 27001/Cyber Essentials Plus * Personal data should be psuedonomysed to increase data security ## Key Details | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Publication source | Contracts Finder | | Latest notice | https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/cadc141f-958d-46cf-8614-48f7aecd93e0 | | Notice type | Market Engagement Notice | | Procurement type | Standard | | Procurement category | Not specified | | Procurement method | Not Specified | | Procurement method details | Not specified | | Tender suitability | SME, VCSE | | Awardee scale | Not specified | | All stages | Planning | ## Dates | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Publication date | 14 Feb 2025 | | Submission deadline | Not specified | | Future notice date | 10 Mar 2025 | | Award date | Not specified | | Contract period | Not specified | | Recurrence | Not specified | ## Values | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Tender value | Not specified | | Lots value | Not specified | | Awards value | Not specified | | Contracts value | Not specified | ## Status | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Tender status | Planning | | Lots status | Not specified | | Awards status | Not specified | | Contracts status | Not specified | ## Buyer | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Main buyer | ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL | | Locality | CHELMSFORD | | Post town | Chelmsford | | Postcode | CM1 1QH | | Country | England | | ITL 1 | TLH East (England) | | ITL 2 | TLH3 Essex | | ITL 3 | TLH36 Heart of Essex | | Local authority | Chelmsford | | Electoral ward | Moulsham and Central | | Westminster constituency | Chelmsford | | Delivery location | Not specified | ## CPV Codes ### Divisions - 66 - Financial and insurance services - 72 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support ### Codes - 66000000 - Financial and insurance services - 72300000 - Data services ## Release History - 14 Feb 2025 at 14:00 - Planning - Market Engagement Notice - https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/cadc141f-958d-46cf-8614-48f7aecd93e0 ## Documents - https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/cadc141f-958d-46cf-8614-48f7aecd93e0 14th February 2025 - Early engagement notice on Contracts Finder - https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=TzK0qFwVFUKg8X7YzJqZL8-SJGT0amlCn09Ud0NpBQxUMjBTWDJOSkZLWE9ZTlE4TU9JUVI0MVlLTC4u Please see the linked Microsoft Form which contains an Early Market Engagement Questionnaire for this requirement. Interested parties can provide responses to all or some of the questions. Please feel free to provide additional information regarding services offered which you think the Council would find useful in relation to this exercise. Interested Parties should note that any responses received during this exercise will be treated as confidential information and it is the intention of the Council not to share this information with any third parties. Thank you very much for your interest and participation. ## Provenance This Markdown file is an alternate public rendering of the D3 Tenders contract record. The canonical page is https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2. The underlying structured data is available as OCDS JSON at https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-b5fd17-2b17a3de-92bc-4c2d-85c0-00b2677713c2.json.