SCE0035 - Alternative Provision - Health and Safety and Safeguarding Quality Assurance

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR COMPETITION

Alternative Provision: Health and Safety and Safeguarding Quality Assurance

Introduction

Leicester City Council and Leicestershire County Council are considering commissioning an Alternative Provision Health and Safety and Safeguarding Quality Assurance service which will cover both regions. It is anticipated, dependent upon an engagement exercise, that tenders for this service would be sought in 06/ 2025, to enable a new contract to begin from 01/ 09/ 2025.

As part of the commissioning process, the authority is undertaking a soft market test. This gives potential providers and other stakeholders the opportunity to express their interests and feed in their views about the potential service model and specification principles. The commissioners will use the information to appraise options and further develop the specification.

This process does not constitute a formal tender or other competitive bidding process and will not result in the letting of a Contract. The authority is using this process solely to test the market to gather information and ascertain the level of interest in this particular service. There are therefore no formal criteria which we will use to judge your responses, and it is not our intention to provide any feedback.

Leicester City Council provides a wide range of services to over 360,000 people. The City Council is a unitary authority, comprising 21 wards. Leicestershire County Council provides a wide range of services to over 700,000 people. The Council comprises 151 wards.

Key service requirements

The commissioning partners require a service that will fulfil quality assurance responsibilities in relation to the use of unregistered alternative provision by schools in the City and County. This may be expanded to include a small number of providers outside of the area, which are used by the authorities and colleagues in Rutland.

This service will require quality assurance audits to be undertaken with 70+ unregistered alternative provision providers that feature in the LLR Alternative Provision Directory. These audits will have an emphasis on health and safety and safeguarding requirements and will need to be completed annually. Providers will need to communicate findings to contacts within the Local Authority and be a point of reference for schools when they are placing CYP within the target APs. We would like the provider to track schools who commission each AP; the timeframe for use and the impact of the AP intervention.

The service will effectively link to and contribute to the delivery of actions detailed in the Leicester City and Leicestershire Alternative Provision Strategic Plans and Alternative Provision Handbook, as well as Guidance from the Department for Education and OfSTED.