ASC0267 - Soft Market Testing - Direct Payments Support Service

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR COMPETITION

Leicester City Council intends to commission a 'Direct Payment Support Service' (DPSS) for people and their families living within the boundary of the city of Leicester who receive a direct payment/personal budget to purchase adult's or children's social care services. The service should also be available to people who receive a personal health budget, via the NHS, across Leicester City, Leicestershire and Rutland. This service will support people to use their direct payment to purchase services or employ a personal assistant. It is anticipated that tenders for the DPSS arrangements will be sought in January 2022 to enable a new contract(s) to begin from November 2022.

Commissioners would like to undertake a soft market test. This gives potential providers and other stakeholders the opportunity to express their interests and feed in their views about the potential service model and service definitions. The commissioners will use the information to appraise options and further develop the specification.

This process does not constitute a formal tender or other competitive bidding process and will not result in the letting of a Contract. The commissioners are using this process solely to test the market to gather information and ascertain the level of interest in this DPSS service. There are therefore no formal criteria which we will use to judge your responses, and it is not our intention to provide any feedback.

To participate in this Soft Market Testing, organisations that may be interested, must complete a Soft Market Test questionnaire. The questionnaire can be found by copying and pasting the following web link into your web browser: https://procontract.due-north.com/Advert?advertId=e61b24a0-fa21-ec11-810e-005056b64545&fromAdvertEvent=True

The completed questionnaire must be returned electronically by email before or no later than 14:00 hours on 15 October 2021 to the email address procurement-asc@leicester.gov.uk with the subject heading: 'Completed SMT Q - DPSS.