---
title: "Care & Support Services in Extra Care Housing settings"
ocid: "ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e"
canonical_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e"
markdown_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e.md"
json_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e.json"
source: "Find A Tender Service"
current_stage: "Award"
buyer: "EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL"
published: "2021-09-30"
---

# Care & Support Services in Extra Care Housing settings

Buyer: EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL  
Current stage: Award  
OCID: ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e

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## Summary

The procurement process titled "Care & Support Services in Extra Care Housing settings" is being conducted by East Sussex County Council, focusing on the social work services industry. The procurement is currently at the Award stage following the signing of contracts on 30th September 2021. This process includes the provision of short-term contracts for care and support services across various extra care housing schemes in the UK, particularly in the region of Lewes (UKJ22). The awarded contracts amount to £1,069,470 for Cranbrook & Bentley Grange, £1,182,781 for Margaret House & Downlands Court, and £940,704 for Marlborough House & The Orangery, with the procurement method being a limited procedure without prior publication of a call for competition.

This tender presents significant opportunities for growth within the social care sector, especially for businesses specialising in care and support services. Companies with the capacity to deliver social work services and a strong compliance framework will be uniquely positioned to compete in future tenders, particularly as East Sussex County Council is looking to expand the provider list for both home care and extra care services. Given the current pressures within the provider market, businesses that can demonstrate reliability and quality of service will likely find a favourable competitive landscape when the recommissioning process restarts, especially as the council aims to enhance market engagement.

## Notice

This is a Voluntary Ex-Ante Transparency Notice intended to provide notice of the Contracting Authority's intention to award short-term contracts to its incumbent providers to deliver care and support services in its Extra Care Housing settings.

### Lot Information

Lot 1

This VEAT notice is to provide notice of the Contracting Authority's intention to award short-term contracts to its incumbent providers to deliver care and support services in its Extra Care Housing settings. This notice covers three contracts; each contract will have a term of 15 months. The details of these contracts are: 1 Provision of Care & Support Services at Cranbrook & Bentley Grange Extra Care schemes. Value PS1,069,470 to CSN Care Group Ltd. 2 Provision of Care and Support Services at Downlands Court and Margaret House Extra Care schemes. Value PS1,182,781 to Care At Home Services Ltd. 3 Provision of Care and Support Services at The Orangery and Marlborough House Extra Care schemes. Value PS940,704 to Care At Home Services Ltd. The current contracts have been awarded following competitive tendering processes carried out during 2017 and 2018 under the Light Touch Regime Reg 74, compliant with PCR 2015. The current Covid 19 pandemic situation has resulted in a critical situation across many areas of social care. The outbreak, along with the staff shortages and the additional pressure created by new Covid variant strains, have impacted significantly on provision of these services and on providers' capacity to engage in tender activity, thereby undermining competition at this time for these services. The Contracting Authority is currently undertaking a recommissioning process, which has been in progress since 2019, but which itself has been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Contracting Authority plans to procure a provider list for delivery of home care and extra care in one tender, because service provision across both care-delivery settings has the same core requirements. This approach is expected to improve competition for both extra care and home care. In so doing, the Contracting Authority will mitigate risks to service provision, including failure linked to Covid19 impacts through putting in place arrangements with alternative qualified providers available, should they be needed. The pressured provider market makes it clear that no current alternatives or substitutes exist. The Contracting Authority's commissioning strategy is to extend the scope of the procurement in order to encourage a stronger market response when the re-procurement process is commenced. The Contracting Authority conducted consultations with providers. The conclusion is that a procurement exercise launched now would fail, because providers would be unable to respond. If a process were to be attempted on shorter timescales than those outlined above, the recommissioning process would not deliver the most cost effective model for delivery and the Contracting Authority would severely limit the number and quality of responses it would receive -whether it would receive any at all is open to doubt. Since market feedback indicates that it is likely that there will be few or no bids submitted in response to a tender in current circumstances, then from a technical or economic analysis of the theory of competition, competition is absent. Delaying the tender for a period will allow the market to recover and will enable the Contracting Authority to issue a new, combined tender issued covering both Home Care and Extra Care with the intent of establishing a larger market opportunity for potential bidders. It is clear that this course of action meets the purpose of the Regulations - namely, to provide an open and transparent system for the competition for public contracts in the interests of securing a fair and efficient market for those contracts and that no reasonable substitute or alternative exists.

### Procurement Information

The procurement falls under the scope of exemptions from application of the regulations requiring a competitive procurement process to be undertaken for the award of a public contract in writing and above the relevant value thresholds. In this instance the Contracting Authority relies on Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) which states that: The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used by a particular economic operator in any of the following cases: (b) where ... services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons. But only ... where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement. The Contracting Authority will implement a 10 day standstill prior to confirming the contract awards. The contract awards will not therefore be confirmed before 11th October 2021.

## Key Details

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Publication source | Find A Tender Service |
| Latest notice | https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/024335-2021 |
| Notice type | Award Notice |
| Procurement type | Standard |
| Procurement category | Services |
| Procurement method | Limited |
| Procurement method details | Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition |
| Tender suitability | Not specified |
| Awardee scale | Large |
| All stages | Award |

## Dates

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Publication date | 30 Sep 2021 |
| Submission deadline | Not specified |
| Future notice date | Not specified |
| Award date | 29 Sep 2021 |
| Contract period | Not specified |
| Recurrence | Not specified |

## Values

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Tender value | Not specified |
| Lots value | Not specified |
| Awards value | Not specified |
| Contracts value | £3,192,955 |

## Status

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Tender status | Complete |
| Lots status | Not specified |
| Awards status | Active |
| Contracts status | Active |

## Buyer

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Main buyer | EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL |
| Locality | LEWES |
| Post town | Brighton |
| Postcode | BN7 1UE |
| Country | England |
| ITL 1 | TLJ South East (England) |
| ITL 2 | TLJ2 Surrey, East and West Sussex |
| ITL 3 | TLJ22 East Sussex CC |
| Local authority | Lewes |
| Electoral ward | Lewes Priory |
| Westminster constituency | Lewes |
| Delivery location | TLJ22 East Sussex CC |

## Supplier

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Number of suppliers | 2 |
| Supplier names | CARE AT HOME SERVICES (SOUTH EAST; CSN CARE GROUP |

## CPV Codes

### Divisions

- 85 - Health and social work services

### Codes

- 85310000 - Social work services

## Release History

- 30 Sep 2021 at 14:36 - Award - Award Notice - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/024335-2021

## Notice URLs

- https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk

## 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-h6vhtk-02e67e. The underlying structured data is available as OCDS JSON at https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-02e67e.json.