Invitation to tender for provision of public relations services to North East Finance

North East Finance is the holding fund manager of the £142.5m Finance for Business North East Programme, which provides investment finance for SMEs based in the North East of England via a suite of seven separate venture capital and loan funds.

North East Finance wants to appoint PR advisers to assist it in relation to all of the company's public relations and marketing activities for the period to 30 June 2016, with a possible extension of the contract to 31 December 2017. Further details are provided in the Invitation to Tender document.

Additional information: North East Finance will not disclose its budget for this work because doing so acts as a disincentive to bidders to identify potential added-value or cost-saving strategies and tends to result in most bidders pitching to the budget, which undermines NEF’s ability to attempt to maximise value for money. As indicated on the Contracts Finder entry for this contract, this is not a contract opportunity to which the “OJEU” procedures apply. These relate to the Official Journal of the European Union and to tendering processes which must comply with procedures stipulated in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 – which apply to service contracts with a projected value in excess of £172,514. This PR contract therefore has an estimated total budget below £172,514; that total relates both to the initial 12 month period and also the potential extension period of a maximum of an additional 18 months. North East Finance will not provide any guidance regarding budget other than this, for the reasons stated previously.