Northampton Borough Council is committed to tackling, preventing and reducing homelessness, and to minimising its use of bed & breakfast and out-of-borough temporary accommodation to meet the needs of homeless families.
Although the council is in the process of setting up a private sector leasing scheme to help meet the demand for temporary accommodation, urgent action is also being taken to move homeless households out of bed & breakfast accommodation and into suitable self-contained accommodation within the Northampton Borough or Grange Park.
The council therefore has a requirement for nightly-purchased temporary accommodation that is partly furnished and is managed and maintained by the housing supplier.
All organisations wishing to provide temporary accommodation service from 1.6.2018 onwards, will need to apply to join the DPS. This includes providers that have an existing contract.
The initial “Round” for this DPS will be open for 30 calendar days. Following on from this, each “Round” will then be open for 3 months (close every quarter). This means that applications can be submitted throughout the duration of the DPS, but the authority will only process the applications on a quarterly basis.
This DPS agreement is for an initial term of four years (until 31.5.2022), with an option to extend on an annual basis, depending on the council’s need for this type of temporary accommodation. The council is using the process of a DPS to enable providers to apply for the DPS at any time.
It is difficult to predict the exact value of this contract as the authorities’ requirements are likely to vary over the contract term, but it is estimated that the annual value will be 3 446 208 GBP per year. Please note that this value is based on greatest spend with up to 200 units each in use for every night of the year, for each of the 4 years. While the council will not exceed the procurement of this number of units, it may not have a requirement for this number of units throughout the contract and as such expenditure will be less.