UK – Bedford: Housing Related Support for Teenage and Young Parents (BBC222)

The Council is seeking to enter into a contract with a suitably qualified organisation for the provision of Housing Related Support for the provision of housing related support for a Teenage and Young Parent scheme. The services are currently delivered from two locations in Bedford, Charis House and Foster Hill Road.

The service will be expected to provide support to teenage and young parents, with housing related support needs, who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. This may include people who have one or more of the following issues:

The service will have two elements: accommodation based support and resettlement. The accommodation based support will be delivered within designated buildings and the resettlement element will be available to service users moving on into independent living of any tenure type.

The current service provides 13 units across two (2) sites. One site provides eight (8) units of accommodation and the other provides five (5).

The service will not provide personal, clinical, or health care or professional counselling to its clients within this contract and should not carry out direct work with children within this contract.

The contract is not tenure specific and can be delivered to clients residing in any type of independent accommodation including B&B, private rented accommodation and other types of temporary accommodation.

The Council reserves the right to enter into the whole or part of this contract, both in terms of the scale and scope of the contract.

The Council is conducting the procurement under the Open Procedure pursuant to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (’the Regulations’). For the avoidance of any doubt, the services to be procured fall within Part 2 (Rules Implementing the Public Contracts Directive), Chapter 3 (Particular Procurement Regimes), Section 7 (Social and Other Specific Services) of the Regulations.

It is anticipated that the contract shall commence on 1st November 2015 for a period of five (5) years from contract commencement.

The contract may be extended for any period or periods of up to two (2) years in 6 or 12 month blocks at the Council’s sole discretion.

Additional information: The procurement will be undertaken using the Council’s online secure e-sourcing portal and all interested organisations will need to register via the following link: https://www.proactisplaza.com/supplierportal/?CID=bedfordbc

Please note that notification emails will be sent to the email address registered on the system so it is advisable to use an email address that is regularly monitored on behalf of your organisation.

Full instructions of how to use the e-sourcing portal can be found on the relevant website, however in the event of any difficulties please contact the PROACTIS Help Desk on 03300050352 or alternatively the Council either by emailing commercial.hub@bedford.gov.uk or by calling 01234 276420 for further assistance. The ITT documentation will be available to download within 2 working days from publication of the Contract Notice once the registration process is complete.

Interested organisations must also contact the Commercial Hub by emailing commercial.hub@bedford.gov.uk in order to ensure that the registration process and access to the tender documentation runs smoothly.

All interested organisations are required to return one (1) electronic copy of their completed Tender submission via the Council’s e-sourcing portal. Only those Tender submissions returned by the closing date and time will be deemed valid. Late submissions will not be accepted.

During the procurement process, it is compulsory for Bidders to utilise the e-sourcing portal as the main channel of communication and exchange of documents. For this purpose, as stated above, it is quintessential that Bidders register with a valid, accurate and regularly monitored email address. In declaring an interest in this procurement process, Bidders agree to the use of this system.