Issue - meetings

[Report of the Director of Adults and Health.  To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Wellbeing]

The report requests approval to extend the DPS for Residential and Nursing categories for a period of 1 year to 31^st July 2022 with provision to extend for up to a further 6 months, subject to utilisation value.

The Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Wellbeing introduced the report which sought approval for the extension of the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) procurement sourcing tool for the provision of Residential and Nursing care requirements. The proposal was to extend the DPS for Residential and Nursing categories for a period of 1 year to 31 July 2022, with provision to extend for up to a further 6 months.

The Cabinet Member and the Assistant Director for Commissioning responded to questions from Councillor Palmer:

-           The past year had been a difficult year, which had resulted in a shift in how services and processes were managed.

-           The service had been engaging with the market and built good relationships through the North Central London network and it was hoped that this would help other service providers to recognise the benefits of a DPS. Other boroughs did not yet have access to the DPS at this stage, but it was hoped that through engagement, the benefits of this procurement route would be recognised.

RESOLVED

1.         That pursuant to Contract Standing Order 10.02.1(b) to approve the extension of the Dynamic Purchasing System for 1 year with the option to extend for 6 months for the following care provision in the values outlined below:

Reasons for decision

The Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) is a supplier e-sourcing tool and a compliant route to market under the Public Contract Regulations, which enables suppliers to enrol, accredit and be approved to bid for Council contracts. The Council’s overall spend for residential and nursing over the past financial year was in the region of £25,545,000 and £9,496,000 respectively (a combined value of £35,041,000) the Council already holds a DPS enterprise license through until November 2022 and would not incur any additional expenditure on licenses for this period.

Due to the exigencies of the Covid-19 pandemic a significant amount of additional work was generated for the commissioning team, which meant insufficient time was available to enable a tender process to renew fully the DPS for this market. Moreover, Commissioning had to rationalise work and focus on the renewal of the Home Support DPS, as well as managing the daily communications with the provider market around testing, PPE, infection control and vaccinations. Had there been sufficient resources DPS renewals could have been undertaken simultaneously.

The DPS provides a compliant route to market for care provision, which ensures transparency in the procurement process, equal treatment of suppliers and that the requirements of both the Public Contract Regulations 2015 and the Council’s Contract Standing Orders (CSO) can be met, particularly as much of care provision is purchased on an individual basis and the Regulations do not provide for hitherto ‘spot contracts. Purchasing compliantly outside of a DPS would require either a resource intensive approach, whereby each requirement would be commissioned separately, and suppliers would go through the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 564