Future Skills Programme

Employment on release can reduce the chance of reoffending, by up to nine percentage points compared to those without a job on release. We want to increase the number of prisoners entering employment on release by ensuring they have the skills needed to secure jobs, thereby supporting more prison leavers to rebuild their lives. The Prisons Strategy White Paper is committed to establishing the Employability Innovation Fund. The fund will enable prison governors to work with more employers and training providers to repurpose workshops and deliver sector-specific skills training. This in turn will meet the changing needs of the economy and smooth the path from prison to employment. The Future Skills Programme (FSP) is one strand of the Employability Innovation Fund and is focused on sector-specific training. The Authority is seeking suppliers to develop innovative approaches and skills training courses to equip prison leavers with the necessary skills to obtain and sustain jobs for the future. Any programme will include, a minimum of a job interview for a genuine vacancy and/or job offer for everyone who completes a Future Skills Programme course. This and other minimum tender requirements are set out in the Invitation to Tender (ITT). Programmes will target 'job ready' prisoners in in their last six months of sentence. This design model intends to help prisoners develop new, sought-after skills that support the ease of transition into sustainable employment on release. Through the FSP, HMPPS are seeking suppliers who are able to support prisoners to develop the skills and employer relationships to secure sustainable employment on release. The skills training programme will fund projects across a variety of different prisons and sectors/job roles, in England and Wales between 2023 and 2025 to support prison leavers into employment. This procurement will be run as a one stage tendering process, which shall cover 17 Lots. Bidders will have the option to bid for up to a maximum of five of the seventeen regional lots, however the maximum number of Lots a bidder may be awarded is three Lots, subject to the operation of the Award Process set out in the ITT. The tender for each lot will differ and bidders will therefore have to submit up to five separate tenders should they choose to bid for multiple lots. Tender responses should be tailored to and reflect the needs of individual lots. Bidders that choose to bid for multiple Lots should ensure that they review the data packs for each Lot and tailor each bid for the relevant Lot. The total available funding to cover the 17 Lots is in the region of £5,769,507. The Authority is using the Jaggaer electronic eSourcing Portal (formerly Bravo) for the procurement. The ITT, which is comprised of a number of volumes, is available only in electronic format via the eSourcing Portal. Bidders must register the names of all contacts requiring access to the sourcing event and should submit queries via the eSourcing Portal. Link to the eSourcing Portal: https://ministryofjusticecommercial.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.html