ASC0295 - Visual Impairment Enablement Service

Leicester City Council Public Health is carrying out a commissioning review of its provision of a Visual Impairment Enablement Service for Leicester.

The current service specification is being reviewed, and subject to the review findings, a tender for this Service could potentially be advertised from January 2024 at the earliest to enable a new contract to begin from 01/07/2024.

As part of the commissioning process, the Authority is undertaking a soft market test. This gives potential providers and other stakeholders the opportunity to express their interests and feed in their views about the potential service model and specification principles. The Commissioners will use the information to appraise options and further develop the specification.

This process does not constitute a formal tender or other competitive bidding process and will not result in the letting of a Contract. The Council is using this process solely to test the market to gather information to ascertain the level of interest in this particular service and to appraise options and further develop the specification. Therefore, there are no formal criteria which we will use to judge your responses, and it is not our intention to provide any feedback.

We would encourage you to respond if you feel this is something your organisation may have an interest in. The Soft Market Testing questionnaire can be found by copying and pasting the web link below into your web browser and then download the SMT questionnaire. Please email your completed questionnaire to the email address procurement-asc@leicester.gov.uk with the subject heading: 'Completed SMT Q - VIES' before or by no later than 14:00 hours 16th March 2023. The Council welcomes the opportunity to engage with and appreciate your assistance in providing us with your views. However, you should note that in any subsequent procurement exercise the Council will have to comply with our legal obligations and that neither the intention nor the purpose of this soft market testing exercise is to confer any advantage upon its participation in any future procurement process