Provision of Body Armour for the Ministry of Defence Police

Single supplier - technical reasons

This is an equipment contract for the provision of body armour for Armed Firearms Officers (AFOs) within the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP). All serving MDP officers are capable of being armed and therefore it is a force wide requirement to issue body armour to all AFOs routinely.

The contract will be awarded in accordance with the Procurement Act 2023 (PA23) and the Procurement Regulations 2024. It is considered that this contract can be awarded by way of a Direct Award to Safariland UK Ltd in accordance with Section 41 and Schedule 5 - Single Supplier, paragraph 6 of the PA23 due to the unique technical reasons relating to this procurement.

The MDP Body Armour requirement necessitates a solution that is certified to a minimum protection level of HO3.

The holistic MDP Body Armour solution is currently certified to HO3 using the P44 & P07 lightweight plates made by Safariland UK Ltd, as well as hard plates, plate carriers and other ancillaries also manufactured by Safariland UK Ltd.

Testing and certification of the body armour solution is completed as a whole system based on the above components. No other providers are known to offer plates compatible with the existing system that are also capable of maintaining the holistic systems certification to HO3 required, without also requiring the procurement of a whole new system of plates, carriers and ancillaries. Procurement of such a new system which result in unreasonable incurrence of otherwise avoidable additional costs and underutilisation of existing stocks of the certified solution carriers and ancilliaries.