Outdoor education - support and guidance services for off-site activities and educational visits

Descriptions

The Council currently have a contract in place for the delivery of Outdoor Education Guidance Services in Portsmouth. This contract is due to end on the 31st August 2024 and is valued IRO £20,000 per annum. The contract provides advice and support services for outdoor educational activities ensuring compliance with Portsmouth City Council's (the 'Council') duties under health and safety legislation. The service is used by Portsmouth Local Authority maintained and Academy schools via a Traded Service. There is a 92% take up across Portsmouth schools. There are more than 2,800 visits organised by Portsmouth schools every year, with over 70,000 participants. The purpose of this Prior Information Notice (PIN) is to engage with the market to obtain a better understanding of the level of interest from potential providers in delivering this service. We are also using the opportunity to share a top-level service specification and ask interested providers to comment on our requirements. Any information a provider shares could be used to assist drafting our final specification in support of any tender activity. The Council are using this PIN as a call for competition in accordance with regulation 26(9) and regulation 48(5) to (7) of the Public Contract Regulations 2015. The PIN will be published via Find a Tender Service (FTS) on the same day that this is published on the Council's e-sourcing system InTend. Interested economic operators are invited to express their interest, and only those providers who express an interest will be invited to tender. Following this process (PIN), those who have responded to the PIN will be invited to tender via the Council's e-sourcing system InTend. The contract will be awarded using a restricted procedure without further publication of a call for competition. The new contract will run for initial period of 3 years with the facility to extend for a further 3 years, 6 years in total, subject to performance and agreement of both parties and in increments to be agreed.