Decision details

Cabinet considered the report and:

1.    Agreed to award a contract to The Adolescent and Children’s Trust [known as ‘TACT’] for the delivery of the Permanency Service within Peterborough for a total value of £126,150,000 from 1 April 2017 until 31 March 2027 with a further option for the Council to extend for a 10 year period.

2.    Authorised the Corporate Director: People and Communities to (i) extend the contract for a further 10 year period at a cost of up to £125,000,000, adjusted for inflation as necessary, should the Council exercise the option to extend, and (ii) approve any variations to the contract, subject to consultation with the Director of Governance.

3.     Authorised the Director of Governance to enter into any other legal documentation necessary to document the contractual and other legal arrangements between the parties.

Although there are financial savings attached to this proposed contract, the approach to developing the proposed Permanency Service has been built on improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people in Peterborough, as outlined in the sections above. To summarise, improved outcomes will be achieved as a result of:

·         Increased placement choice for children and young people needing care or who are in care through an increased number of ‘in-house’ foster placements;

·         Better placement matching between children in care and foster carers whom we know well and who are local to Peterborough;

·         Increased placement stability as a result of improved levels of support and training for foster carers;

·         Increased capacity within the Family Group Conferencing Service, increasing the likelihood that children are able to remain with families on a sustainable basis or, where this fails, to remain within their extended family, benefiting from legal permanency as offered by a Child Arrangement or Special Guardianship Order;

·         Reduced risk of the breakdown of placements under the above orders coming to un-planned ends as a result of the development of improved support services that are in-line with adoption support;

·         The development of innovative programmes to help to support children and young people returning home to their families after a period in care, reducing the likelihood of a return to care, and all the associated negative consequences to relationships and long term outcome;

·         The continued strong performance in relation to adoption and adoption support as outlined in the service specification;

·         The capacity of a new charitable provider to draw in other charitable organisations and funding streams to support children, young people and their families in Peterborough.

Paragraphs 4.14 – 4.48 of the report for Creating Opportunities and Tackling Inequalities Scrutiny Committee dated 12 September 2016 [Appendix 1 to this report], expand on the above bullet points and provide detailed information about the expected benefits for children and carers that will follow from the development of the Permanency Service.

This is an innovative project. Innovation tends to carry an element of risk. Possible risks have been minimised through the governance arrangements as detailed above, and through a range of other measures as set out in paragraphs 4.82 – 4.93 in the same report to Scrutiny dated 12 September 2016, at Appendix 1 to this report.

Procurement

The contract was procured under Regulation 74 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

A Competitive Contract Notice was published through Delta, a system that publishes the opportunity to a number of tendering journals, such as Contract Finder and the Council’s website. Bidders are directed to the Council’s e-sourcing portal (Supplierforce) that gives them access to the councils Invitation to Tender (ITT) and supporting documentation. The ITT explains to bidders how the procurement process will be conducted and gives instructions on how to proceed with entering a compliant bid.

The open procurement process included a separate qualification stage (pass or fail) and an award stage (scored out of 1-00%); both stages are contained within the same Invitation to Tender (ITT) document.

The qualification stage assessed bidders against criteria that included: finance; insurance; safeguarding; quality assurance; licensing and registration; technical and professional ability and specific elements such as if they are a ‘not for profit organisation’; willing to particulate in open booking accounting and if they meet the legislative requirements regarding Registered Adoption and Fostering Agencies.

The ITT consisted of four elements, with the maximum scores for each listed below:

·         Method statement questions [60%];

·         Presentations – four in total [20%];

·         Actual price [10%], and;

·         Pricing assumptions [10%].

Prior to entering their tenders, the participating organisations were afforded the opportunity to ask the PCC clarification questions; this allowed bidders to take account of the answers whilst compiling their bids. Once the bids were submitted the Main Evaluation Panel undertook a desktop evaluation of the ITT responses. Bidders were then invited to undertake four presentations that were evaluated by four separate panels, these included Staff, Foster Carers and Children and Young People. Another separate panel evaluated the Actual Price Submission. Bidders were asked to clarify certain elements of information prior to the final evaluation and moderation process occurring.

Tenders were evaluated on a Quality: Cost ratio of 80%:20%.

Three organisations submitted tenders which were evaluated as follows:

This means that the outcome of the evaluation process was that TACT supplied the winning tender with a total score of 74.78%.

In terms of the staff panel, TACT came just behind bidder A [with a difference in score of one mark] but was well ahead of bidder B. Foster carers rated TACT as the strongest bidder of the three. The panel of children in care placed TACT and bidder B as equal first, with bidder A placed significantly behind.

            The following options were considered and rejected:

Option 1 - Continuation of current services. This option was rejected for the following reasons:

a)    The Council has a responsibility to use public resources responsibly and faces significant budget pressures. Doing nothing would imply acceptance of reliance on as many as 100 relatively high cost placements for children and young people, leading to the need to make savings elsewhere in children’s services;

b)    A tender exercise would generate competition within the market, potentially leading to innovation and the potential to invest in additional services for children and young people, as outlined elsewhere in this report.

Option 2 – Cease to provide placement services. This option was rejected as Peterborough City Council has a statutory duty to deliver these services.

None.

None.