In-line with the national Transforming Care agenda Lancashire County Council (LCC) have been working closely in partnership with the Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen Local Authorities to consider the provision required for people with learning disabilities and/or autism who display behaviour that challenges including those with a mental health condition and require a placement in the community following an in-patient stay or to prevent an in-patient admission. Due to the estimated discharges within the next 12 months within the pan Lancashire area a Flexible Agreement has been developed. This is intended to be an interim agreement and will initially be in place for 1 year with the option to extend for up to a further 3 years if required.

In-line with the national Transforming Care agenda Lancashire County Council (LCC) have been working closely in partnership with the Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen Local Authorities to consider the provision required for people with learning disabilities and/or autism who display behaviour that challenges including those with a mental health condition and require a placement in the community following an in-patient stay or to prevent an in-patient admission. Due to the estimated discharges within the next 12 months within the pan Lancashire area a Flexible Agreement has been developed. This is intended to be an interim agreement initially in place for 1 year with the option to extend for up to a further 3 years if required. This is to allow the time to develop further commissioning options for Transforming Care whilst allowing us to have an initial agreement in operation as early as September 2016 to allow Transforming Care placements to be commissioned with suitably selected providers via this Flexible Agreement.

The estimated quantity of work that is intended to be commissioned via the agreement is broken down by an indicative number of discharges into the community:

Within the 1st 12 months: 35;

Following the 1st 12 months it is anticipated that there will be up to 20 discharges a year over the next 3 years.

The estimated value of the work that is intended to be commissioned via the agreement is between 20 000 000 GBP and 150 000 000 GBP.

In coming to this estimated value the contracting authorities have considered a range of unpredictable factors including:

— The current average (mean) annual cost of a call-off contract is 155 000 GBP;

— Call-off contracts will be let for between 1 and 10 years;

— Up to 35 service user discharges could be made in the 1st year, with an estimated number of (up to) 20 discharges made in subsequent years if the agreement is extended.