Delivery of debt advice in prisons

On this page:

About this tender
The service we are tendering for
Update - changes to contract
About the tender process
List of documents
For more information

About this tender

The LSC and National Offender Management Service (NOMS) invite tenders from organisations to deliver debt services in prisons in three NOMS regions in England: The East and East Midlands, Kent and Sussex, and the South West.

The service we are tendering for

We are tendering for services in 55 prisons. Organisations must tender to provide advice across a ‘cluster’ of between three and five prisons. There are a total of 17 clusters.

There are two aspects of the service:

Clients can access up to two 45-minute sessions of face to face generalist debt advice; and
Group advice sessions will be run to improve client debt awareness and financial literacy .

In the South West, there will additionally be drop-in sessions during visiting times in certain prisons so that visiting family members can obtain debt advice.

Update - changes to contract documents

We have reviewed the draft Contract Standard Terms and Schedule we published with our Invitation to Tender and have revised them:

so they are more closely aligned with our main face-to-face legal services contracts (LSC Unified Contract) both in terms of content and structure;
to clarify the scope of the debt advice services to be delivered in prisons; and
to clarify the obligations on providers delivering those services.

We recommend that applicants familiarise themselves with the revised Contract Standard Terms and Schedule and the (new) Contract for Signature. Together these documents form the basis of the contracts which we will award to successful Applicants and will supersede the draft contract documents published with the Invitation to Tender.

We have also produced a short explanatory note for applicants. This note explains the structure of the revised contract documents and a summary of key changes to the draft Contract Standard Terms and Schedule which we published with our Invitation to Tender.

The revised Contract Standard Terms and Schedule, the Contract for Signature and our explanatory note for applicants can be found at in the documents panel on the right of this page.

About the tender process

This is a competitive tender. Organisations wishing to tender do not need to be holders of an LSC Unified Contract and new entrants to the market are welcome.

Full details of how to tender for this work are set in the Invitation to Tender document which can be found in the documents panel on the right.

The tender closing date is 12pm (noon) on Tuesday 26 May 2009. Applications received after this date will not be considered.

List of documents

Please see the documents panel for:

Invitation to tender
Draft contract standard terms and schedule
NOMS Vetting Questionnaire
Calculation of cluster contract values
Tender form
Summary of prison clusters
Questions and Answers

For more information

The deadline for receipt of questions was 1 May 2009 and no questions about this tender can now be answered.

Answers to all questions asked within the available timescale can be downloaded from the documents panel on the right of this page. We would advise all potenetial applicants to read the tender Q&A.

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Last updated: 15 May 2009