C0228 - Birmingham's Schools Catering, Cleaning and Caretaking Services (Market Consultation)

Birmingham City Council is seeking to enter into an arrangement with a public sector partner that brings an improved, cost effective catering, cleaning and caretaking service to schools. This would be an alternative model of service delivery to Cityserve which is the current in-house provider of these services to schools in the Birmingham area.

The Council’s vision is to establish a sustainable, co-ordinated, city-wide service for schools that can provide a better focus on nutritional needs, community engagement and social value. Cityserve is currently a viable trading entity with a turnover in excess of £38m and provides services to more than 300 schools.

They currently have approx. 370 clients, over 500 service agreements / contracts in total (cleaning & catering) with over 2185 cleaning hours per day. Cityserve currently employs 2,000 staff, and, if a successful partner is found, it is envisaged that the majority of these staff will TUPE into the joint venture.

The Council are seeking to set up a Teckal company compliant with Regulation 12 PCR 2015, to create a joint venture to deliver our vision for a world class catering and cleaning service and further enhance services provided to schools within Birmingham and beyond. Prospective Joint Venture partners will recognise the value and growth opportunities that already exist but can be improved upon further through investment in innovation, commercial freedoms and the application of intelligent IT systems.

The aim is to build a Teckal company than can secure a successful long term future through investment and innovation, in return for being afforded this opportunity the Council will expect to receive both a significant rebate and an annual return of profits over a 10 to 15 year period. Expressions of interest are only sought from organisations that are willing to meet those conditions set out in Regulation 12, Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (“the Teckal exemption”) when entering into a joint venture with Birmingham City Council.

Please note - This service will not include any element of service delivery to the City Council (the service will be delivered commercially to schools direct). If you are interested in applying please register an interest on in-tend.

The web address is https://in-tendhost.co.uk/birminghamcc. Registration and use of in-tend is free.

All correspondence for this procurement process must be via the in-tend correspondence function. Interested parties will be able to download from the e-portal a market testing questionnaire. Applicants may then be invited to submit further proposals and / or to attend a discussion/a bidder day w/c 15th June 2015 to assist in f...