Agenda item

Report CS18168

The Council had a contract in place for Supported Living for seven Adults with a Learning Disability at Johnson Court.  The current contract had been in place, delivered by Sanctuary Home Care Ltd, from 14 January 2013 and was due to end on 13 January 2020, with no further extension options available. 

There was an ongoing need for Supported Living services, both for existing and new clients, and the report detailed the procurement strategy for the retendering of the Johnson Court scheme. Given the projected level of demand it would not be appropriate to decommission the service, while grouping it with other services would make it difficult for the Council to facilitate a market with a diverse range of appropriate services and potentially lead to one provider having a monopoly.

The report had been scrutinised by the Adult Care and Health PDS Committee at its meeting on 19^th September 2018 and the Committee had supported the recommendations.

The Chairman of the Executive, Resources and Contracts PDS Committee challenged the commissioning strategy of tendering for this contract as a single service, but tendering the five services in the next report on the agenda as a combined service. He considered that best value and quality services would be achieved by the flexibility of seeking either a bulk tender for all six services or offering the opportunity for providers to bid for a variety of either single or multiple services, and he did not understand why only Johnson Court was offered as a single contract. Officers confirmed that by seeking a different provider for Johnson Court the Council would be protected from a situation where one provider achieved a monopoly, weakening the Council’s position. However, a multiplicity of options would make the tendering process more complicated. The services in these two reports represented about 25% of the Council’s supported living service, and a report on a further three properties was due to come to Members shortly. Councillor Graham Arthur commented that the approach of seeking multiple providers was correct and would also enable services to be tailored to the needs of individuals. The strategy had been considered by the Commissioning Board and the Board had supported what was proposed.

The Leader of the Opposition asked when KPIs for the services would be available for Members to scrutinise. Officers explained that they were intending to re-draft the service specification before December with a view to going out to tender in January. Once a provider was chosen there would be further discussions in the light of the provider’s own KPIs and standards. 

The Leader asked officers to brief the Chairman of the Executive, Resources and Contracts PDS Committee and the Leader of the Opposition on the strategy for packaging this service and the five services in the next report. The Portfolio Holder for Adult Care and Health, Cllr Diane Smith, asked for the KPIs for these contracts to be reported to Adult Care and Health PDS Committee in January. 

RESOLVED that the commencement of the retendering for this service be approved in accordance with the Council’s Financial and Contract Procedure Rules, for a new five year contract, with the option to extend for up to a further two years; the retendered contract is planned to commence from 14 January 2020 at an estimated annual value as indicated in Section 6 of the report.