Haughmond Hill Café Concession

Forestry England intend to re-tender a concession opportunity to operate our established Café in Haughmond Hill near Shrewsbury, due to expiry of the current lease at the end of January 2025. We are therefore seeking expressions of interest from operators wishing to provide a café concession Haughmond Hill, https://www.forestryengland.uk/haughmond-hill. The site attracts in the region of 130,000 visits annually, there are a variety of waymarked walking trails and panoramic views of the surrounding Shropshire countryside. The café currently operates as a kiosk with approximately 6 indoor covers, 25 covers in an undercover space, and 64 covers of adjacent picnic benches. The café will be required to open daily April to the end of September from 10am to 4pm and for a minimum of 5 days a week 10am to 3pm (to include all weekends but excluding Christmas day) over the autumn and winter. Currently we anticipate café lease period being 9 years in duration (6 +3), a copy of the lease Head of Terms will be available in the tender documents which we expect to be published this Spring/early summer 2024. The total value of the lease opportunity over the term will be in the region of £2 million. We expect the lease to commence in April 2025. Prospective suppliers are invited to express an interest in this opportunity and have initial conversation with our West District Operations Manager - Recreation ahead of the tender documents being published. Expressions of interest should be submitted electronically through the Delta eSourcing portal. Following consideration of the initial expressions of interest, Forestry England may wish to engage in further soft market testing with respondents. Therefore, at this stage the scope of the lease and lease duration is still subject to change based on feedback from the market. This prior information notice does not commit Forestry England to any future procurement or any subsequent decisions based on the output of the market sounding exercise. Forestry England reserves the right not to proceed to a formal procurement process.