Decision details

To procure an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides confidential support services on demand and “in the moment” support, free of charge to the employees of all service users. The EAP will emphasise employee work performance as core to the service and be proactive in helping individuals with their issues, before they might develop into more complex situations, or mental health problems. 1.4. The contract is for a period of 2 years, with an option to extend for a further period of 1 year (2+1). The contract start date is 01 April 2022 with Health Assured the current provider and represents the third successive tendering of this contract awarded to them.

Health Assured were the only supplier to bid for the contract and their quality submission provided good evidence both of which met with the brief to provide a description of the service and the level of activity provided and how they believe this demonstrates your technical and professional ability to meet our requirements.

We used the YPO framework for this procurement exercise as an alternative to an open bid in order to secure best value for the Council. None of the other three suppliers bid and neither did they provide any feedback as to why they did not submit. We instructed the further competition coordinator to make enquires as to why not although no reply was received. We discounted the option of not awarding the bid to the one supplier on two counts. Count One: at the stage considered the remaining time to finalise any re procurement exercise was insufficient to meet service deadlines for buyback. Count Two: as the evaluation of the tender was so strong and covered the key requirements with a good level of detail and in some cases demonstrating an excellent understanding of the requirements with additional detail and supporting evidence.