Transferring Care for 3 individuals with a Learning Disability and/or are autistic who display behaviours that challenge, including those with a mental health condition into Nixon Street-NHS Cheshire & Merseyside ICB

Description

NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit is working as an agent on behalf of NHS Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB) who have undertaken a procurement for the provision of transferring care for 3 individuals with a learning disability and/or are autistic who display behaviours that challenge, including those with a mental health condition into Nixon Street for patients from Cheshire East Place. This Procurement was to identify a provider to deliver care and support services for those individuals who have been identified for the Nixon Street property. Initially Nixon Street capital was secured for Cheshire East individuals with a Learning Disability and/or autistic people with behaviours that challenge due to Cheshire East having no suitable accommodation adapted for people with autism and challenging behaviours that offers self-contained accommodation, with specialist adaptations and care. However, this facility will also be able to support individuals being discharged from Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, so could be used by Cheshire West and Wirral individuals to ensure the facility is fully occupied and therefore provides value for money. There is also the opportunity to repatriate individuals back into area from Independent Sector facilities should there be capacity. Whilst the facility will prioritise individuals from Cheshire East initially, priority will be given to individuals from the below places, in the order listed below: a) Cheshire East b) Cheshire West c) Wirral d) New patients being discharged from hospital or repatriating back to area. Following this, the ICB would then look to prioritise individuals from other Places across the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB Footprint. Nixon Street is a substantial property located in Macclesfield, in close proximity to the town centre. It's location is near the main district general hospital (MDGH) and in short walking distance to the Learning Disability Community Team and Macclesfield Mental Health Services. NHS England (NHSE) have previously provided substantial capital for the renovation of Nixon Street and are looking to handover to the landlord by the end of April 2026, therefore it's key that this service provision is in place to support the mobilisation of the property to support rehabilitation. Please note, the construction timeline may change, which may have subsequent delays to the timescales. The scheme has been developed specifically for 3 individuals with a Learning Disability and/or Autism who display behaviours that challenge, including those with a mental health condition from the Cheshire area. It has been historically very difficult to find suitable placements for those individuals which can contribute to admissions and placement breakdowns. This procurement was to provide supportive ongoing clinical care to those individuals who have been discharged from Acute settings. The ICB's focus was to provide homes for people in the community rather than relying on out of area housing pathways once the individual's rehabilitation and treatment has been completed. The Transforming Care programme aims to improve the lives of children, young people and adults with a learning disability and/or autism who display behaviours that challenge, including those with a mental health condition. The programme has three key aims: • To improve quality of care for people with learning disability and/or autism • To improve quality of life for people with a learning disability and/or autism • To enhance community capacity, thereby reducing inappropriate hospital admissions and length of stay. Lot 1: This notice is an intention to award a contract notice, for a competitive process, in line with the requirements for Health Services and mixed procurements which fall under Regulation 3 and 11 for the award of a contract with a competition, and Schedule 1 of the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. This is a new service and the contract will be awarded to a new provider. The contract was planned to start 27th April 2026, however, due to unforeseen delays in the procurement process, the contract start date will now be 1st June 2026. The contract will be for 3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years, until 31st May 2031. The Invitation to Tender was live on Monday 15th December 2025 on the Atamis Portal. The deadline for submissions was Tuesday 20th January 2026 12:00pm. To express interest and participate in the Competitive Process, providers were instructed to register and apply via Atamis e-sourcing portal https://atamis-1928.my.site.com/s/Welcome The Atamis contract reference was C405584 'Dec 25 - C&M Transferring Care for 3 individuals into Nixon Street'. The overall maximum financial envelope for this tender was £6,119,704.00 (for 3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years), based on 2:1 support for each individual in the first year. This was the figure used to assess the bids financially. There may be some fluctuations in the package requirements stepping down for one individual, as it's expected the support needed will reduce during the contract period. Any bid whose overall cost was higher than the overall maximum financial envelope of £6,119,704.00 for the total 5-year contract (3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years), was to be viewed as non-compliant and would take no further part in the procurement exercise. In addition, any bid whose annual maximum financial values were higher than the maximum financial values for each year shown below, was also viewed as non-compliant and would take no further part in the procurement exercise. This was done during the evaluation of the Pass / Fail criteria stage (please see procurement document Annex 7 Evaluation Model, section 3.10(b) for details). The maximum annual financial values were as below: Year 1 - £1,653,524.00 Year 2 - £1,116,545.00 Year 3 - £1,116,545.00 Year 4 - £1,116,545.00 Year 5 - £1,116,545.00. There will need to be flexibility regarding the packages should there be a change in the clinical need for one or more of the package, these changes will be based on the individual's needs and matched to the level of staffing required to support these needs as contained in the Annex 13 Tiered Rates document provided with the tender documents. The cost analysis was based on the lowest overall price submitted for the maximum financial value (under £6,119,704.00 for the total 5-year contract (3 years with an option to extend for a further 2 years). The 5 year total was to be evaluated. If additional care is required, then this will be paid at the additional rates identified in Annex 13 Tiered Rates. The approximate lifetime value of the contract that has been awarded is £5,859,703 for 5 years (3 years, with an option to extend for a further 2 years). This was below the maximum financial envelope of £6,119,704. The questionnaires were located within the requirements. Further details were made available via documentation and information released during the tender process. The contract award criteria was specified in the procurement documents, including the agreed relative importance of key criteria (e.g., weighting, prioritisation) against which the bids were evaluated. The ICB considers this service to be a mixed procurement, in line with Provider Selection Regime (PSR) Regulation 3, with the main benefits of the overall health service placing this key service under Provider Selection Regime for the arrangement of Healthcare services where: the main subject matter of the contract is in-scope healthcare services; and the relevant authority is of the view that the out of scope goods or services could not reasonably be supplied under a separate contract (that is, where procuring goods or services separately would likely prevent the relevant authority from meeting its duty to act in accordance with the procurement principles).