Portsmouth City Council - Term Service Contract for Water Hygiene Compliance - 2025

Descriptions

Portsmouth City Council (the Council) is looking to appoint a supplier to deliver Water Hygiene services across its housing and corporate stock, with an estimated annual value of approximately £200k. The contract will be let for an initial 5-year term, with the option to extend by up to a further 5 years in intervals to be agreed.

The scope of the service will include statutory water safety inspections, monitoring, and sampling, ensuring compliance with all relevant regulations and maintaining the safety and functionality of the Council's water installations. This is a re-procurement of an existing service provision.

Background information

Following cabinet approval and undergoing a formal options appraisal Building Services is required to undertake a procurement exercise for the provision of water hygiene testing and maintenance across its managed building assets.

The options appraisal report submitted on 19th February 2025 to the Cabinet Member for Housing & Tackling Homelessness recommended continuation of outsourcing delivery

All recommendations and requested delegations were approved. For full details of the Council's formal report and associated appendices can be found using the following link -

https://democracy.portsmouth.gov.uk/ieIssueDetails.aspx?IId=31340&PlanId=0&Opt=3#AI25498

Within the option appraisal it was determined the future gas servicing contract should solely focus on gas and remove the water hygiene workstream to improve the competitiveness within gas contracts for that workstream. Consequently, the water hygiene contract is to be tendered as a standalone contract, which will also allow it to be managed by the Council's water hygiene specialist.

The Council is responsible for managing a portfolio of properties that require regular monitoring, testing and disinfection to ensure safety, compliance, and cleanliness to prevent the risk of legionella. The contract that support these services are due to expire and needs to be reprocured to ensure business continuity.

The scope of services will include statutory water hygiene inspections, shower head descaling and TMV servicing, ensuring compliance with all relevant regulations and maintaining the safety and functionality of the Council's water installations.

Housing Stock Information

The Council has a housing stock of approximately 17,500 properties of which approximately 15,500 are socially rented and then there are approximately 2000 leasehold properties. Within the stock there is a mix of housing types including houses and bungalows. However, the majority of the dwellings are within purpose-built blocks of flats constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Traditionally the estate has been spread across the two geographical areas of Portsea Island (on-island, PO1 to PO5) and Paulsgrove and Havant (off-island, PO6 to PO9).

A recent acquisition of approximately 800 properties has however subsequently increased the 'off-island' area to sites in Gosport, Fareham and Winchester.

Within the contract there will be a requirement to monitor approximately 50 of the blocks of flats within the Council's stock, which will mostly be on-island, however, there will be infrequent inspections to the off-island stock as well.

Corporate Assets

The Council is also responsible for approximately 550 corporate assets including buildings such as schools, sports pavilions, care homes and offices; the majority of which are located on-island. There are currently 150 corporate assets that require inspections.

Current & Future Demand

The demand fluctuates annually and is highly dependent upon the number of schools that access the Council's Service Level Agreements (SLA) within the Corporate assets, however, risk assessments within the residential assets are generally stable.

Over the last 12 months approximately 135 risk assessments were undertaken across both asset types. It is anticipated that over the next 24 months this will remain within a +/- range of 15%

Changing Context and Objectives

Over the next 5-10 years the Council is expecting to experience a number of challenges with regards to the maintenance of its housing and corporate assets with any incumbent Supplier to work in partnership with the Council to ease pressures where they can.

Significant changes in legislation such as the Building Safety Act and Fire Safety Act will require greater scrutiny from suppliers to ensure they are working in a compliant way particularly when working in buildings of 6+ storeys.

There will be more focus on the accuracy and timely manner of up-load of compliance information and ensuring Legionella Risk Assessments are well managed and resolved and will be monitored by the Social Housing Regulator.

Scope and Specification

The core scope of works, which the successful supplier will be required to deliver are -

• Legionella Risk Assessments
• TMV servicing
• Temperature monitoring
• Clean and descale of shower heads
• Inspection of tanks, calorifiers, etc
• Sampling

Ancillary Scope of Works

The ancillary scope of works, which the successful supplier may be required to deliver, namely:

• Removal of dead legs
• Installation and replacement of valves and TMV
• Repairs to tanks and systems
• Ancillary plumbing in connection with water hygiene

For clarity the contract will focus on monitoring and inspection. However, infrequently the contractor may be required to assist with repairs where it is appropriate to do so.

The Specification has been designed to ensure that all Suppliers have an effective and equal understanding of the contract's functional and performance requirements.

The Council reserves the right to make amendments to the specification if deemed necessary during the clarification stage.

Contract Model

The council intends to award a single M3NHF Schedule of Rates term contract.

Payments will be made in accordance with monthly valuations of completed works.

Contract value

The Council are estimating the contract value will be in the region of £200k per annum.

Based on anticipated inflationary uplifts and potential growth in stock, and the potential impact of LGR the total individual contract spend over the potential 10-year term (5-year base with options to extend) is expected to range between £2m to £3.7m.

Contract duration

The contract term will be for 5 years with options to extend in increments to be agreed up to a maximum of 10 years.

Partnership Working

In addition to working in close partnership with the council, the supplier will also be required to work in partnership with the council's other existing term service contractor partners.

Social Value

The Council are committed to continuously reviewing and improving the approach to social value delivery, and suppliers can find further information using the following link -

https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/services/council-and-democracy/social-value/

Local Government Review

As part of the wider Local Government Review (LGR), the Council is required to actively engage in discussions with neighbouring authorities to explore potential opportunities for collaboration, shared service delivery, and governance alignment. While this engagement is ongoing, no formal decisions or agreements have been reached at this stage.

Under current LGR proposals, it is likely to require Portsmouth City Council to form a new Authority by merging with other neighbouring Authorities. For Portsmouth, this will result in a new Council being created to provide the same services to everyone in the city, whilst covering a larger area and have a different name. Effectively all the current council services in the area of the new council boundary would be merged to create a new Council.

At this stage, the Council can only confirm its current demand and scope of requirements; however, this may be subject to change should additional needs arise from other local authorities as part of wider structural reforms.

Any tender opportunities and contracts will be structured to allow adjustments in the scope of services and the value of contracts to the Council to respond to changes in demand and budgetary constraints, whilst ensuring that services remain efficient and continue to provide value for money. Additionally, provisions will be included to adapt to changes in geographical boundaries resulting from any reorganisation. This will ensure that services can be extended or retracted to align with new administrative areas.

The impacts of Local Government Review cannot be fully understood at this stage. However, when considering the potential surrounding local authorities and their current property portfolios, the Council anticipate the annual value of the contract could increase in the region of £100k per year, in the event these services needed to be subsumed into this opportunity. Therefore, taking this into account the potential value stated in the total value of the opportunity over the 10-year period could be up to £3.7M.

In the event of reorganisation, contracts will include clauses that allow for the assignment of the contract to successor authorities. Any assignment clause is likely to state any contract may be assigned to any new authority that succeeds the original contracting authority.

For further details in respect of LGR see the following link -

https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/services/council-and-democracy/devolution-and-plans-for-local-government-reorganisation/