It has been an exceptionally busy time on the business development front with contract renewal dates due, new contracts on offer and changes to some prime contractors we work with.
In April the tender process for the delivery of National Citizen Service, Autumn 2015 through to the end of summer 2018, went live. This has been a two stage process with stage one allowing for providers to gain a place on the delivery framework, essentially a list of approved providers to go onto stage two. We gained our place on the framework with strong scores and indicated that we would consider more than one North of England area. Stage two focuses on the areas bidders are specifically competing for. Our bid was submitted at the beginning of September and we are expecting to hear the outcome in early October.
Bid writing for contracts with Cumbria County Council (CCC) is taking place at the moment. The contracts CCC will commission have changed from the contracts that we currently hold. Tendering is for a set of services providing Early Help. This includes one county wide Careers Information Advice and Guidance contract including CEIAG for the most vulnerable young people, and the tracking of young people. CCC is also commissioning six area contracts for 0 -12 year olds and six area contracts for 11 – 19 year olds. The tender submission date for all these contracts is the 28th October 2014.
A new piece of work we are delivering over the next 19 months is the Independent Support Service. The Service provides advice and support for parents and young people around the Special Educational Needs reforms. Early in the year we also undertook a research project on behalf of the Council for Disabled Children, which was linked to the development of the Independent Support Service.
Manchester based organisation, Economic Solutions, is the new Prime Contractor for the National Careers Service (NaCS) in the North West and Staffordshire. We are pleased to have been awarded the contract for the delivery of NaCS across the whole of Cumbria and Lancaster region which means we are the sole provider in these areas. The NEW National Careers Contract starts on October 1st.
