Overview
The Council commenced a procurement in 2023, but did not award the contract. Max Associates were commissioned to undertake an options appraisal for the future management of the centres, including bringing the service in-house, setting up a trading company or re-procuring the service. The Council was keen to maximise income generation of the centres, whilst supporting the outcomes identified in its Strategic Review of Sport and Leisure.
The options appraisal recommended that the Council re-procure the service, which we were further commissioned to support.
Outcome
The winning Operator was the incumbent Leisure Focus Trust, who have included a number of investment proposals, to drive the core income areas of the centres to support the growth of payment to the Council of on average £1.5m higher than the current payment per year.
The ‘lessons learnt’ meeting following the project highlighted the importance of having “open and honest communication’ within the team, and having ‘a good environment, culture of trust, and “One team” approach, we were proud to be a part of that team.
Summary of Project
The new procurement process included an updated services specification to include the outcomes established through the Strategic Review and included the option for the Authority to consider an agency model as part of the solutions if suppliers believed this would improve the VAT efficiency of the contract but could maintain the risk transfer as set out in the operating contract.
Thus, the competitive procedure included negotiation in core areas of investment to increase usage and thus income, the use of an agency model and other commercial areas of risk transfer. Further the negotiation considered a number of development programmes and how they could meet the council’s outcomes, but keeping within the financial parameters the Council was facing.
We provided full technical support to the Council’s internal team, including development of the services specification, and evaluation framework, and supported the team in the evaluation of tenders and dialogue meetings. Given the contract end date, the timescales were tight, and we supported the team in detailed planning of each procurement stages and evaluation period to ensure the timescales were met.
