Sevenoaks Primary School - Catering Services

The successful tenderer will be required to provide catering services at Sevenoaks Primary School (SPS).

The catering service provision at the School has never been market tested and to ensure Best Value principles are applied the Head teacher and School Governors have made a decision to tender the catering service.

SPS is very much a ‘family’ school, with governors, parents and staff working closely together for the benefit of the children. From this shared relationship and open communication they strive to:

Develop our children’s individual talents to their fullest potential by providing a happy school environment, which promotes high achievement, broad interest, self-discipline and respect and care for others.

The School currently has 537 pupils on roll but is moving from two form to three form entry and this figure will rise to 630 by September 2019. Year groups range from Reception to Year 6 and the current uptake of School lunches is circa 83% of the School roll.

The School operates a very flexible lunch service and the children can either opt to have a school meal every day, on specific days each week, or on an ad-hoc basis (taking meals as and when they choose) or bring a packed lunch. There are four different school meal choices each day.

The chosen company will have as a minimum The Soil Association Food for Life Silver Catering Award.

SPS has a well-equipped but old production kitchen although the school is part of the Priority School Building Programme and a new school will be opened on the site by September 2017. The school does not require any financial investment in the kitchen but would be looking for support with the design and implementation of the new kitchen.

The new contract will commence on 1 April 2016, for a 3 year term with the option of a 2 year extension.

Six staff are currently employed by the incumbent contractor to manage and oversee the catering service and therefore TUPE Regulations will apply to this contract.

The current value of the contract is approximately £125,000 per annum, which includes children and adult meals, direct staff costs and sundries.

Additional information: Interest in the pre-qualification process should be expressed via email only to pqq@litmuspartnership.co.uk, clearly stating within this email which contract / notice you are referring to. Please also provide, as a minimum, a contact name, full company postal address and telephone number.

The pre-qualification questionnaire and associated documents can be obtained at: http://www.litmuspartnership.co.uk/project/sevenoaks_primary_school

The closing date for receipt of the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire is 30.10.2015 (12:00). Tenderers are required to ensure that documents are obtained and returned to The Litmus Partnership Limited, by email to pqq@litmuspartnership.co.uk, by the above closing date and time.

Documents in respect of economic / financial standing (where indicated in the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire) shall be returned to The Litmus Partnership Limited, by email to pqq@litmuspartnership.co.uk, by the above closing date and time.

It will be the Tenderer's responsibility to obtain any necessary documents in order to submit a response by the closing date and time.

The contracting authority reserves the right not to award any or part of the contract which is the subject of this OJEU notice and reserves the right to terminate the procurement process at any time.

The contracting authority will not be liable for any costs incurred by those expressing an interest in tendering for this contract opportunity.

The contracting authority will consider variant bids, evaluating them (so far as the variant or the evaluation of the variant is in the opinion of the contracting authority practicable) on the same basis as a conforming bid, but shall not be obliged to accept any such bid in preference to a conforming bid even if the variant bid scores more highly. No variant will be considered unless the bidder simultaneously submits a conforming bid.