Newcastle

Thank you for those who have contributed throughout the consultation process for homeless prevention services in Newcastle . We have reviewed and considered the feedback received as part of this process which we will use to inform the development of the service specifications for the contract opportunities, including how they will work as part of Newcastle’s wider homelessness prevention system. 

Overall, the feedback has not changed the proposal to consolidate the current contracts into the new contract opportunities presented in the final consultation document. We have provided additional information and clarification in the form of an Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) in response to feedback received during the consultation process and the determination of the final service model, including:

• information on the homelessness prevention services that are out of scope of the contract opportunities, as they are subject to separate commissioning activity
• being explicit that the provision of funding for maintaining void capacity for the purposes of delivering crisis “emergency” beds will be included in the total contract values for Contracts 1, 2 and 5

• other options we considered for structuring the contract opportunities.

The Council will now commence a competitive procurement exercise for the contracts described in the attached IIA. 

It is still proposed that the arrangements for the new service will commence October 2019:

• Procurement process commences – late April/early May
• Award of contract – end July 2019
• Transition period – August to October 2019 (including data migration)
• Service commences – 01 October 2019

 Funding and contracts for existing services in the scope of the proposal will continue until the new contracts commence, at which point existing funding will be committed to fund the new contracts. The above activities and timescales may be subject to change.