Provision of Domiciliary Care Services in the Western Health and Social Care Trust Area

Reference VII.2.2 Continued: Extension of Contract Period. The Trust is preparing to re-tender this Service. Unfortunately, this re-procurement exercise has been delayed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular due to staff diversion to deal with urgent and unforeseen Covid-19 consequences and exceptional pressures on the domiciliary care sector, this front line service and other critical areas affected by Covid-19. As such, new contracts under the re-procurement exercise will not be in place before the expiry of the current Contracts in Lot 6 on 28th February 2022. In order to ensure the continued and uninterrupted service delivery of this critical front line service in the interim, the Trust issued a letter dated 24th February 2022 to amend the Contracts in Lot 6 with effect from 1st March 2022 (Variation Date) so that the Contract Period shall be amended to include one further period of extension of 12 months commencing on 1st March 2022 and expiring on 28th February 2023. Department of Health Direction. The DoH NI direction has been brought about by exceptional circumstances; the need identified by the DoH NI to provide the Additional Funding to the independent domiciliary care sector is as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the exceptional and unforeseen pressures on the domiciliary care sector and this critical frontline service. The second condition of this ground under Regulation 72(1)(c)(ii) is that the modification does not alter the overall nature of the contract.. Here the service, being a domiciliary care service, is unchanged. As such, the modification does not alter the overall nature of the contract and therefore satisfies Regulation 72(1)(c)(ii). The final condition of this ground under Regulation 72(c)(iii) is met in that the increase in price does not exceed 50% of the value of the original contract. The increase in price for Lot 6 is £1,844,449 and the value of the original Contracts for Lot 6 is £8,000,000.