Market Warming Event for Research and Evaluation Contracts for MHCLG

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is considering inviting tenders for multiple research and evaluation contracts. We expect these contracts to be able to deliver flexible and timely social and economic research, evaluation and analytical advice, aligned with the MHCLG Areas of Research Interest:

MHCLG areas of research interest:

• Housing; research and evaluation spanning a wide range of housing policy interventions; this will include evaluation of large-scale grant-funding programmes, and interventions designed to improve the experience and wellbeing of tenants in both the private and social rented sectors.
• Planning; research and evaluation covering policy related to reform of the planning system and intent to deliver 1.5 million homes. This includes policy areas such as: land, National Planning Policy Framework, Capacity & Capability, viability, developer contributions and Nationally Significant Infrastructure.
• Homelessness and Disadvantages; research and evaluation spanning the implementation of A National Plan to End Homelessness, specific interventions to prevent and address homelessness and rough sleeping, and the areas of multiple disadvantage, resettlement, and domestic abuse.
• Buildings and Fire; research and evaluation covering a range of policy areas related to building systems and fire and rescue services which support improved public safety, innovation and growth. This includes better standards for buildings, products and professionals, remediation, and fire and rescue sector reform.
• Elections; research and evaluation spanning elections policy, including evaluating upcoming measures in the Electoral Resilience and Democratic Engagement programme, e.g. lowering the voting age.
• Local Growth and Communities; research and evaluation spanning local growth and communities policy, e.g., evaluating place-based transformation programmes and targeted national funding, as well as potential small-scale rapid research with community groups.

We expect to commission multiple contracts to support these different priority areas. We envisage that these will work as separate subject specific contracts; however, we expect there to be a degree of flexibility in each. We welcome and encourage interest and bids from consortia involving a range of suppliers and skills across different research and evaluation methods, given the expected scale of these contracts.

The exact scope and timing of any work will depend on MHCLG priorities over the course of the contract/s. We expect suppliers to work alongside analysts in MHCLG's analytical teams to support policy and delivery teams and help MHCLG to:

• Understand the limitations of the current evidence base and, where necessary, fill these evidence gaps
• Evaluate the impact, implementation and value for money of interventions
• Assess what works in each subject's policy area: housing, planning, homelessness, disadvantages, buildings and fire, elections, local growth and communities.

There will be a market warming event for these contracts on the Wednesday 10th June 16:00-17:00. The event will take place remotely over Microsoft Teams. During this meeting, a short overview of requirements will be presented, and questions / suggestions will be welcomed from attendees.

We hope the event will provide an opportunity to meet other organisations, which may facilitate you placing consortium bids. We encourage attendees to reach out to one another following the event to build these relationships further. There will be an opportunity within the event to introduce yourselves (name and organisation), which we hope will facilitate this.

If you or your organisation would like to attend the event, please register using the link below by 5th June stating the correct email address, and a teams meeting link will be sent to you.

Link: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/2775ed76-8823-… ↗