01819 Provision of Video Visits (COVID-19)

Description

In response to the Covid-19 situation SPS was required to implement a video visits system to improve arrangements for those in our care to maintain family contact. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a profound impact on all aspects of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) daily operations. The SPS COVID-19 response plan required a number of prompt decisions to be made to curtail aspects of the prison regime. This allowed SPS maintain effective prison operations on a basic regime whilst implementing necessary social distancing measures to keep prisoners, staff and members of the public safe. This included the temporary cessation of prison visits. This measure limited the ability of those in our care to have face to face contact with family and friends and triggered an urgent requirement for SPS to provide an alternative solution to prison visits. In response to this situation, SPS decided to provide access to secure video visits across all its Establishments. The service will be run as a pilot and operate for 6 months with the option to extend for a maximum further 6 months. SPS will evaluate the demand and effectiveness of video visits in use before advertising any further service requirement. The indicative cost of the solution was expected to be higher than the current EU Threshold but if SPS were to utilise any of the procedures which required competitive tendering, it would be unable to comply with the mandatory minimum time limits and deploy a viable and secure solution expediently. Therefore, due to extreme urgency, this procurement has been carried out under the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 regulation 33(1)(c) and 33(3).