The Cirrus Consortium (The Consortium) is a procurement consortium that currently consists of in excess of 50 members including Registered Providers of Social Housing, Local Authorities, ALMOs and NHS Trusts. Members are based across England, Wales and Scotland, with additional organisations joining the consortium on a regular basis. As contracting authorities access the frameworks available from the Consortium, they are allowed Membership to the Consortium, giving them active input into the Central Purchasing Body.

The Consortium is managed on behalf of the Membership by Cirrus Purchasing Ltd, a specialist purchasing and supply consultancy supporting the social housing, public and private sectors.

The Consortium sought bids from service providers to participate in an agency labour and recruitment services framework covering the following lots (non-exhaustive examples of roles included in each lot are provided in brackets):

— Lot 1: Administration (including clerical staff, personal assistants and office support staff).

— Lot 2: Contact centre staff (including helpdesk personnel and helpdesk team leaders).

— Lot 3: Trade operatives across all trades (including plumbers, heating engineers, electricians, joiners and labourers).

— Lot 4: IT staff (including IT technical support staff, IT helpdesk staff, IT systems engineers and management and director level IT roles).

— Lot 5: Finance staff (including management accountants, purchase ledger staff, procurement staff and management and director level finance roles).

— Lot 6: Human Resources staff (including HR officers, HR admin staff, health and safety officers and management and director level HR roles).

— Lot 7: Asset Management staff (including asset managers, surveyors, development staff and management and director level asset management roles).

— Lot 8: Housing Services staff (including housing officers, welfare benefit support officers, scheme managers and management and director level housing services roles).

— Lot 9: Executive Directors, board members and technical roles.

— Lot 10: Master vendor (delivering all roles covered in Lots 1-9).

— Lot 11: Neutral vendor (delivering all roles covered in Lots 1-9).

Bidders who submitted for lots 10 and/or 11 must have been able to provide personnel covering all roles identified in lots 1 to 9. Bidders may use subcontracted agencies to meet this condition if required.

Successful bidders are required to provide a range of agency labour and recruitment services to Consortium members including, but not limited to:

— Temporary staff placements.

— Staff on a temporary to fixed term basis.

— Staff on a temporary to permanent basis.

— Recruitment of permanent staff positions.

— Interim placements (higher level staff positions).

For lots 1-9, successful bidders were not necessarily required to provide all of the above services as requirements were assessed on an individual basis for specific positions by individual Consortium members. Successful bidders who were awarded a place on lots 10 and 11 however were required to provide all of the above services.

The framework covers the full range of roles required by consortium members including, but not limited to those listed in lots 1-9. From time to time, Consortium members may also access the agency labour and recruitment services offered under the framework to fulfil additional roles not explicitly named in lots 1-9.

The framework is available for use by all contracting authorities (as defined by Regulation 3 of the UK statutory instrument Public Contracts Regulations 2006 #5), particularly Registered Providers of Social Housing within England and Wales (as defined by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008), Registered Social Landlords within Scotland (as defined by the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010), local authorities and NHS Trusts across the UK. The framework is also available for use by all current and future members of the Cirrus Consortium.

The framework agreement is 4 years in duration from the commencement date. The framework commenced during March 2015.

The framework covers call-off contracts made within England, Scotland and Wales, but excludes Northern Ireland. For the avoidance of doubt, trading and invoicing relationships will be directly between the relevant framework suppliers and the relevant contracting authorities.

The estimated value of work over the framework period is in the region of GBP 40 000 000 excluding VAT. However, this is an estimate only and the potential maximum value could significantly exceed this value. This is for information only, and no guarantees are given, nor are implied as to the value of business that will be placed with successful bidders participating in the resulting framework agreement. There is no separate information available on the estimated levels of expenditure in each lot.

The tender was undertaken as a Part B service as defined by Schedule 3 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 #5.