Women's Services in Thames Valley DA

Negotiated without a prior call for competition. No tenders or no suitable tenders/requests to participate in response to restricted procedure. Justification: The Authority considers the award of the contracts without prior publication of a contract notice is permitted by Regulation 32(2)(a) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 on the basis that no and/or no compliant tenders were received in the 17 call-off competitions run under the DF. No bids were received in the following call-off competitions: seven Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) areas for Personal Wellbeing (PWB) contracts; seven for Women's Services contracts; and two PCC areas for Young Adults in Wales. No compliant tenders were received for one call-off competition for a Women's Services contract. Section VI.3 of the Contract Notice for the DF published on 15 June 2020 (see IV.2.1) gave notice that the Authority could directly award a call-off contract pursuant to Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 where there is a call-off competition failure. Accordingly, after due consideration, the Authority has decided to make direct awards in each of these areas pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(a) on grounds of competition failure. Further, the Authority relies on Regulation 32(2)(c). The Authority undertook extensive market engagement in the design of the DF and engaged with tenderers answering clarification questions after the call-off competitions were launched. Suppliers had indicated via the Dynamic Framework that they would be willing to deliver services in the PCC areas with failed bids. There was no indication that one or more competitions would fail and such failures therefore constitute unforeseeable events. These failures have brought about conditions of extreme urgency as there is insufficient time to comply with the relevant time limits to re-run these competitions and to enable successful tenderers to mobilise in time for service commencement on 26 June 2021, by reason whereof, direct awards are necessary. The Authority intends to make the contract awards no later than 04 May 2021 to allow sufficient time to mobilise the contracts by 26 June 2021.