Business Resilience and Brexit Readiness Support

The North West Growth Hub Cluster comprises of Cheshire and Warrington, Cumbria, Lancashire, Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester areas.

As the NW Cluster lead, the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LCR LEP) via Growth Platform, working closely with BEIS, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Local Authorities, our partners in the City Region and across the NW, is looking to enhance the current business support available to business to include Brexit Readiness and Business Resilience.

We are seeking to deliver a pro-active programme of engagement, advice and support with SMEs across the North West through the Local Growth Hubs over the coming weeks and months.

The aim of this work is to ensure that businesses across the North West have access to information, advice and support to enable them to be as ready as possible for the UK exiting the EU and are supported to drive resilience through their business so they may thrive through and after this transition.

In order to provide this service, the LCRLEP requires organisations and/or individuals who can provide suitable personnel and expertise in the following areas. The requirement is split into 3 separate lots and quotations are requested for each lot separately:

1. Broker and Adviser Training

We require trainers and specialist advisers to conduct workshops and briefing for North West Growth Hub Brokers and Advisers, and for wider professionals on the key Brexit issues and challenges for business to consider both ahead of EU exit and through the transition period. This is to provide an efficient multiplier approach to getting Brexit readiness guidance to the front line of existing business support activity.

Event promotion, venue, logistics and refreshments will be provided by the local Growth Hubs.

It is expected that there will be a minimum of 2 events per area. Please provide a cost per event.

2. Brexit Readiness Audit/Diagnostic

For those businesses initially/locally assessed through Growth Hubs or otherwise considered as being potentially significantly impacted by EU exit, we require a Brexit Readiness Audit/ Diagnostic service to be made available through the North West Growth Hubs. This will require business advisers with a thorough understanding of the implications of EU Exit on business to take businesses through a thorough checklist and establish an action plan for the business with key issues to address.

We are seeking advisers who can provide generalist business advice and those with specialisms relating to (but not exclusive to) a) agri/food business b) manufacturing c) nuclear d) Visitor Economy e) import and export.

Appointments with clients would be generated and organized through the Growth Hubs and each Audit is expected to require approximately 12 hours of adviser time for client meeting and report/action plan production.

Please provide a cost per business.

3. Business Resilience Advice

In addition to preparing specifically fo

Additional information: Questions

Any questions should be directed to Lisa Duddridge, via email lisa.duddridge@growthplatform.org, on or before the 'ITT Questions Deadline' date stated in the timetable below.

All questions and answers will be made anonymous and disseminated to all potential suppliers on the LEPs tender page https://www.liverpoollep.org/tenders/ by the ITT Responses deadline stated in the timetable below. It will be the responsibility of the potential supplier to monitor the site for latest activity.

Response

Responses are sought from those organisations and individuals that can provide any of the above services.

If you are bidding as a consortium, all members will be required to provide the information required in the ITT as part of a single composite response to Growth Platform.

Separate bids should be submitted for each lot and costing must be detailed per workshop (Lot 1) or business supported (Lots 2 and 3).

The response should make clear which service is being offered and provide the expertise details/cvs of those who will be undertaking the work and the daily fee rate that is required to undertake the work.

The response should make clear which area/s the service will be provided (Cheshire and Warrington, Cumbria, Lancashire, Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester)

The response should also set out the amount of availability of the provider per month for each month from October 2019 to March 2020.

This work will be supervised and managed by Growth Platform on behalf of the LCR LEP. We would expect this work to actively engage DIT colleagues who have details of many of the LCR's foreign owned businesses and their contact history. This should form the basis of the data set with additional information and company details obtained through desk research and data scraping as appropriate.

The output should be a detailed database in format to be specified by the LEP that will allow for structured contact and engagement and recording of interactions and contacts.