Financial Wellbeing Service (Community Partnership Commissioning)

NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) is working as an agent on behalf of North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust (NSCHT) to publish this Contract Award Notice for the Direct Award of the Financial Wellbeing Service. The current contracted service expires 31st March 2025. NSCHT are directly awarding a contract for 3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years, until 31st March 2030.

The approximate lifetime value of the contract is PS200,000 (for 3 years total, with an option to extend for 2 years). Contract Start Date: 1st April 2025 Contract End Date: 31st March 2030 This service is to provide bespoke financial and benefit advice.

MLCSU, on behalf of NSCHT, previously undertook a multi-lot Competitive Process for Community Partnership Commissioning, which included: Lot 1 Health and Lifestyle Service Lot 2 Future Focus Peer Coach Service Lot 3 Financial Wellbeing Service The aim of the Competitive Process exercise, for Lot 3, was to appoint a provider to support the provision of Financial Wellbeing Management and Support (FWB) for Mental Health Services (North Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent) for North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust.

The service role of the Financial Wellbeing Support will offer a Monday - Friday service that arranges flexible support to people with financial difficulties within North Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent. The service will advise and support patients who are under the care of CMHT's including Older Persons and the Rehab Pathway. The relevant reference number for this tender in the Atamis Portal was C318455.

This ITT was made available to all Bidders who expressed a potential interest in delivering this service in line with the requirements for Health Services and mixed procurements which fall under Regulation 3 and 11 for the award of a contract with a competition, and Schedule 1 of the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime PSR) Regulations 2023.

The process was advertised on Find a Tender (2024/S 000-036891) and there were no suitable bids for this contract on this occasion, therefore there were no recommended bidders for Lot 3 as part of this Competitive process. The contract award criteria was specified in the procurement documents.

The procurement documents included the contract award criteria, including the agreed relative importance of key criteria (e.g., weighting, prioritisation) against which, bids were evaluated. This process was a mixed procurement as Lot 1 and Lot 2 were considered to be health, but Lot 3 was not.

The healthcare element was more than 50% of the total value of the 3 contracts and therefore a mixed procurement approach was taken, in accordance with PSR regulation 11 for the procurement of these 3 contracts. Lot 3 itself is considered to be non-health and therefore PSR will not apply.

Public Contracts Regulations 2015 applies , There is an existing service already in place with Citizens Advice Staffordshire North & Stoke-on-Trent.

NSCHT is confident that the incumbent provider would be suitable for direct award under Public Contract Regulations (PCR) 2015, Regulation 32 (1)(2) (a) Use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication 32.-(1) In the specific cases and circumstances laid down in this regulation, contracting authorities may award public contracts by a negotiated procedure without prior publication.

General grounds (2) The negotiated procedure without prior publication may be used for public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts in any of the following cases:- (a) where no tenders, no suitable tenders, no requests to participate or no suitable requests to participate have been submitted in response to an open procedure or a restricted procedure, provided that the initial conditions of the contract are not substantially altered