Find a TenderPlanned procurementPreliminary market engagement notice
Published 3 Mar 2026, 15:26 GMT

Official UK procurement notice

Out Of Hours Call Handling Service

Authority: Vico Homes (Public body)

Services
Planned pipeline valueValue not publishedpipeline notice, not a live tender
Tender notice expected Date not publishedfrom the planned procurement notice
Contract term 2 yrsends 31 Aug 2028 · up to 31 Aug 2030 with extensions · starts 1 Sept 2026

What is being bought

Published requirement description

Vico Homes Limited

Request for Information

Out of Hours Call Handling Service

  1. Purpose

This document invites market feedback and supplier information to validate solution options, indicative costs, and delivery approaches for the requirements outlined herein. It is a non-binding request intended to inform a subsequent sourcing strategy and specification development

  1. Background & Context

Vico Homes Limited (Vico) was established on 1st April 2025 when Wakefield District Housing (WDH) rebranded to deliver our vision 'to build better futures and vibrant communities'.

We are one of the UK's largest social housing providers, with over 32,000 homes across Yorkshire and our wider operating area across the North of England.

We offer much more than bricks and mortar; our support goes far beyond the front door. We go the extra mile to deliver excellent customer services and provide a home to be proud of.

Our tenants and others contact us outside normal business hours to report:

  • Emergency repairs
  • Urgent property safety concerns
  • Anti social behaviour incidents
  • Safeguarding or welfare issues
  • Estate or building emergencies

Contacts may also be received relating to

  • Vico Homes offices and associated premises
  • Lone worker alerts relating to Vico employees

Our goal is to ensure a consistent, safe, and compliant 24/7 service that protects customers and property assets, supports vulnerable residents, and upholds our legal and regulatory responsibilities.

To find out more about us please visit the link below:

Welcome to Vico Homes | Vico Homes

  1. Objectives of Market Research

We are seeking information to help us:

  • Understand market capabilities for OOH call handling in the housing sector
  • Shape the scope and requirements for a future contract
  • Identify innovative approaches for supporting vulnerable customers
  • Test integration options with our MRI/Capita housing management systems (HMS) and Salesforce (CRM)
  • Understand pricing models and operational structures
  • Identify potential efficiencies, improvements, and service innovations
  1. Summary of Requirements

We require a service to operate between the hours 8pm to 8am, seven days per week

Services may include:

4.1 Emergency & Urgent Repairs

  • Receiving and triaging emergency repairs
  • Using diagnostic tools to classify repair types
  • Recording repairs in our HMS
  • Contacting Vico Homes own workforce or on call contractors

4.2 Colleague/Tenant Safety & Welfare

  • Dealing with vulnerable or distressed residents
  • Handling situations involving domestic abuse or safeguarding
  • Welfare checks
  • Crisis escalation procedures
  • Orbis colleague lone worker safety alerts

4.3 Anti Social Behaviour (ASB)

  • Taking urgent ASB reports
  • Understanding thresholds for emergency response
  • Escalation to duty officers (if required)

4.4 Estate Services & Building Safety

  • Fire alarm activations
  • Lift breakdowns
  • Major leaks, flooding, or structural risk
  • Building security breaches
  1. Supplier Response Questions

Please provide a response to the following questions:

5.1 Technology, Housing System Integration & Data Management

  • List the housing management/systems you currently integrate with, if any (e.g. Capita, Dynamics, Salesforce etc.).
  • Describe API or data exchange capabilities.
  • Explain how emergency repairs will be issued to contractors/on call staff
  • Explain how emergency repair logs or ASB reports are sent back to us.

5.2 Performance

  • Provide standard KPIs for OOH services in the industry, including:

o Call answer time

o Abandonment rate

o First contact resolution (FCR)

5.3 Implementation & Onboarding

  • Provide a standard mobilisation timeline.
  • Describe the resources required from us.
  • What does a typical testing/transition period look like?

5.4 Commercials & Pricing Structure

  • Outline your pricing approach (e.g., per call, fixed monthly fee, hybrid).
  • Identify key cost drivers in your model.
  • Provide example cost ranges based on typical housing association volumes.
  • State any contractual minimums (hours, volume, contract length, onboarding fees).

5.5 Routes to Market

  • Provide the names and details of any public procurrent frameworks on which you are a listed provider

5.6 Information You Need from Us

  • Please list any information required from us as part of the specification to allow you to provide accurate pricing and service proposals in a future tender process

CPV: Call centre

The lotProcurement structure

single lot · no lot value published
Lot #1PlannedRenewal 2 yrs
Contract period: 1 Sept 2026 – 31 Aug 2028 (2 yrs) · up to 31 Aug 2030 with extensions
Extensions: Extension options published

Who is likely to bid for this lot ↓

Pipeline intelligence · planning stage: how this market runs before the tender is published

How Vico Homes buys Telephone-answering services (CPV 7951), and who usually turns up

Vico Homes’s published record next to the market for the same work. Frameworks and DPS are left out: they draw different bid counts. Whole-market view: Telephone-answering services (CPV 7951) →

1

How the contest usually goes

Winner shares use published awards; bid and price charts use contested lots.

Question for the bid
This buyerVico Homes · all categories
What to do with it
How often do SMEs win?
i

How often small and medium firms win.

Share of awards where the winner’s size is known.

The counts under this question show how many awards have a known supplier size.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 5 of 13 known-size awards · market: CPV 7951 · UK-wide, n=35
38%17%

Small firms have won here. Neither number says whether you qualify; it describes who has been winning.

How often do local suppliers win?
i

How often local firms win similar work.

Winners with a registered address in the delivery region, out of awards with a known address.

Local means the winner is registered in the region where that award was delivered.

A local branch does not count if the registered address is elsewhere.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 16 of 31 known-location awards · market: CPV 7951 · UK-wide, n=39
52%46%

Most of this buyer’s recorded winners were registered in the region where that award was delivered.

How long to a decision?
i

How long buyers here take to decide after bids close.

Middle value in days from the bid deadline to the award date, on competitions that published both.

Only decided tenders count, so slow ones still waiting are not in.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: 5 decided notices · market: CPV 7951 · UK-wide, n=16
34 days42 days

Half of these awards have an award date within 34 days of the bid deadline.

How often single-bid or direct?
i

How often work is awarded with no recorded rival.

Direct awards and tenders where every published lot count shows one bid.

Both shares are minimums: some awards have no bid count.

Thin markets produce this too; it is not proof of a tailored specification.

Last 36 months.

Buyer: at least 9 of 30 procurements with awards had no recorded rival · market: CPV 7951 · UK-wide, n=56
30%36%

Direct awards or one recorded bid are common here. Check the route before spending time on a bid.

How many bids did past lots attract?

i

How many bids past lots received.

Each colour is a bid-count range. Only competed lots with a published count are included.

Past bids do not predict this tender.

Last 36 months.

This buyer5 lots with bid counts · all categories
20% had one bid
The market25 lots with bid counts · CPV 7951 · UK-wide
20% had one bid
Buyer / market · select a colour for counts
1 bid20% / 20%
Buyer: 1 of 5 lots with published bid counts. Market: 5 of 25 lots with published bid counts.
2–30% / 24%
Buyer: 0 of 5 lots with published bid counts. Market: 6 of 25 lots with published bid counts.
4–640% / 12%
Buyer: 2 of 5 lots with published bid counts. Market: 3 of 25 lots with published bid counts.
7+40% / 44%
Buyer: 2 of 5 lots with published bid counts. Market: 11 of 25 lots with published bid counts.

How did awards compare with estimates?

i

Where winning prices landed against estimates.

Each colour shows awards below, close to or above the published estimate, one lot at a time.

Past prices are a guide, not a bid price.

Last 36 months.

This buyerToo few to chart: 4 lots with estimate and award, 5 needed · all categories
The market23 lots with estimate and award · CPV 7951 · UK-wide
39% below estimate
Market · select a colour for counts
Below estimate39%
Market: 9 of 23 lots with an estimate and award.
Within ±2%48%
Market: 11 of 23 lots with an estimate and award.
Above estimate13%
Market: 3 of 23 lots with an estimate and award.
2

Assess each lot
i

What past awards tell you about each lot.

See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.

No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.

Open a lot for its forecast, this buyer’s previous supplier and possible competitors, from published award history, not a bid list

Lot #1CPV 795124 monthsEstimate not published
Expected competition
i

How many bids this lot may attract.

The forecast uses similar past competitions. The bar shows either that forecast or past bid counts; the line below says which.

Each lot shows its own forecast based on its own category; forecasts for different lots of the same notice are not comparative. The bar shows 158 past lots.

A forecast, not a list of bidders.

—No model forecast yet14% chance of a single bid
Past bids on 158 similar lots
1 bid14%
22 of 158 similar past lots received 1 bid (14%).
2–322%
35 of 158 similar past lots received 2–3 (22%).
4–627%
43 of 158 similar past lots received 4–6 (27%).
7+37%
58 of 158 similar past lots received 7+ (37%).
Comparable past lots usually drew 5 bids.
Commercial price forecast
i

Where the award price may land.

The forecast uses similar awards and the buyer’s estimate. The band covers the middle half of likely prices.

No comparable awards for this lot yet.

A statistical guide from past awards, not a price to bid.

—Estimate not published
The buyer published no estimate for this lot, so there is nothing to forecast against. A price prediction here would be a number about a number we do not have.

Who has supplied this buyer on similar work?
i

Who has done similar work for this buyer.

Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.

A past supplier may not bid again.

No earlier contract of this buyer matches this lot on the published record.

Who could compete for this lot?
i

Who could compete for this lot?

Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.

None is confirmed as a bidder.

Candidate suppliers for this notice have not been worked out yet, so this is not a verdict that nobody fits.

About this data
  • Source. Official UK public procurement notices (Find a Tender), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. New notices arrive through the day; the figures are rebuilt nightly.
  • Two views, kept apart. The authority’s own track record and the wider market for the same kind of work sit side by side and are never mixed. Where the local picture is too thin, a figure widens to a broader market and says which one it used.
  • Forecasts are labelled. The price forecast and its range, possible competitors and the earlier-work matches are our estimates from past awards: not published facts, not win chances and not price advice. Official notices do not say who is bidding.
  • Every figure shows what it rests on. Not every notice publishes a bid count, a value or a delivery region, so each figure carries the number of records behind it, and one built on few records is marked as such. The on a figure explains it; the counting rules are in the methodology. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.

Procedure terms & legal framework

From the official record
Legal basis
UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
Procurement category
Services
Notice status
Planned procurement
Procurement threshold
Unspecified in notice
Regulatory regime
Standard
Commercial structure
Stand-alone contract (no framework)
Competition type
Competitive procedure
GPA / WTO covered
Unspecified in notice
Recurring procurement
Unspecified in notice
First published
3 Mar 2026, 15:26 GMT
Last source update
3 Mar 2026, 15:26 GMT
FTS notice number
2026/S 000-019094
Latest notice
Preliminary market engagement notice (UK2)
Classification (CPV)
Call centre
Delivery area
Yorkshire & Humber (UKE)
Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-066146 Find a Tender

How it was run

Official notice
Submission deadline
—

Timeline

3 Mar 2026 → 1 Sept 2026 · 3 dates
  1. Planning notice published238 days ago
    3 Mar 2026, 15:26 GMT
  2. Market engagement232 days ago
    9 Mar 2026, 23:59 GMT
    1. Response Instructions

    Format: Single PDF or DOCX

    Submission: Send via email to [email protected] by 9th March 2026

    1. Next Steps

    We will review responses to:

    • Develop a full written specification
    • Finalise KPIs and performance requirements
    • Determine the appropriate procurement route (framework, open tender, etc.)
    • Potentially invite suppliers to a market engagement session

    Participation in this RFI does not guarantee inclusion or advantage in any subsequent procurement.

    1. Confidentiality

    The information gathered will be used solely for the purpose of market research and specification development. All responses will be treated as confidential.

  3. Contract starts57 days ago
    1 Sept 2026, 00:00 BST

Notice history

1 event · 1 release on Find a Tender
  1. Preliminary market engagement notice published
    3 Mar 2026, 15:26 GMT
    UK2

Commercial outcome & contract awards

Pipeline notice
Awards (0)
No award published
Contracts (0)
No contract published
Bid statistics
No aggregate bid statistics published

Contracting authority & participating public bodies

VICO HOMES LIMITED

Contracting authorityPublic authority - sub-central government GB-COH: RS007530 · GB-PPON: PHVM-7719-BQMQ Merefield House, Whistler Drive, Castleford, Yorkshire & Humber, WF10 5HXContact email

Official documents & specifications (1)

Official links; attachments are not copied

Notices published for this procedure