WCC Housing First

Westminster City Council (WCC) are recommissioning Housing First Services in two Lots: - Lot 1 Housing First Support Service - Lot 2 Housing First Violence Against Women and Girl (VAWG) The service is a pivotal and strategically aligned provision at the heart of the WCC’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2024. This service is a cornerstone of our ambition to prevent homelessness, enhance recovery, and transform lives through a dynamic, tailored, and outcomes-driven approach.

Housing First is a widely renowned homelessness intervention strategy that prioritises providing permanent housing with high quality wraparound support. Its aims are for service users to retain their tenancies and graduate from intensive floating support to independence, therefore ending recurrent cycles of homelessness.

Housing First has been an established commissioned service in Westminster since 2017. This procurement aims to continue delivering this service primarily for clients who are currently in social tenancies through Housing First and to allow flexibility to accommodate new service users where new tenancies become available.

The overarching aim of this tender is to commission an intensive floating support model for Housing First, structured into two distinct lots: one providing a specialist service for women affected by Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) to support up to 36 women, and the other delivering a generic Housing First mixed gender service supporting up to 48 service users. The estimated Service Commencement Date is 1 June 2026.

The Initial Contract Period is 3 years, with provision for extension, at WCC’s discretion, for up to a further 3 years (1+1+1 years), providing a total contract period of up to 6 years (calculated from the Service Commencement Date), expiring no later than 31 May 2032. During the Contract Period the Authority may, at its sole discretion, require additional Services to be delivered by the Provider, i.e. should additional tenancies or funding opportunities become available, in excess of the existing Services Users, the Provider will liaise with the Authority to agree provisions.

Any increase will be subject to funding availability and to the Authority’s governance procedures. Any agreed scale-up of the Service would be aligned to Housing First model e.g. one extra worker per five to seven Service Users plus management support consideration.

During the contract period the service may be scaled up to support an additional 10 -14 Service Users, this is subject to clause 47 of the Contract and is at the Authorities’ discretion. The budget published does not include this additional capacity.