Direct Award of Contract for the Provision of Lifestyle Services

The aim of the Lifestyles service is to improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Torbay by helping people to tackle health risk behaviours.

In accordance with the Health and Social Care Act 2012 certain public health responsibilities were transferred from the NHS to Local Authorities in 2013. Torbay Council has a legal duty to take action to improve the health and wellbeing of residents and to reduce differences in health outcomes (health inequalities) between different groups of people.

The Lifestyles Service will provide a pathway of support encompassing different levels of intervention depending on the capability, opportunity and motivation of clients. There will be a universal gateway to the service, taking referrals and self-referrals, and providing assessment of activation level (knowledge, skills and confidence) and preference of support channel (self-managed, assisted support or intensive support) to allow allocation to the 'Inform', 'Enable' and 'Support' offers.

Lifestyles services were the fourth contract to be placed into the procurement timeline for procurement by the local authority, preceded by Sexual and Reproductive Health, 0-19 and Drug and Alcohol services. This was due to the fact that the service has the lowest financial value, and is proportionate to the scale, reach and impact of the service in relation to the aforementioned services.

However, part 2 of the Sexual and Reproductive Health contract was abandoned, resulting in this having to be placed back into the pipeline for re-procurement, as well as Drug and Alcohol procurement (as part of the Multiple and Complex Needs alliance) being significantly delayed due to the impact of Covid-19 on both the local authority and the market to continue to progress a procurement.

Equally, there remains uncertainty regarding the future funding model for the Public Health grant provided to Local Authorities, which could create significant budget pressures in future years. As a result the authority cannot commit to procuring Lifestyles services on the open market whereby it may not be able to meet financial the commitment of the awarded contract in future years.

Torbay Council is proposing to issue a directly awarded contract to the incumbent provider for the period 01 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 (with the option to extend for the period up to 31 March 2023), subject to internal approval, to ensure Torbay Council can continue to meet is contractual obligations whilst not being committed to contracts that it cannot sustain financially.

The approximate procurement timeline is:

October 2020 to July 2021 - Develop specification, consult and test with market and service users August 2021 to November 2021 - Launch, process and award tender

December 2021 to March 2022 - Service transition and mobilisation