Holidays, Activities and Food (HAF) services (SC240025)

The Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme offers free places at holiday clubs at Easter, Summer and Christmas holiday periods to children and young people aged 4-16 years old who are in receipt of benefits-related free school meals. The funding for HAF is provided to Local Authorities through the Department for Education. Subject to acquiring funding, it is Kent County Council’s intention to commission HAF provision for 2025/2026 and beyond. The Council therefore wants to conduct market engagement to determine the most appropriate service model for HAF provision across Kent. As part of Kent County Council’s commitment to fairness, openness and transparency the Prior Information Notice (PIN) is issued solely for the purpose of conducting pre-procurement market testing with the following aims: • To develop a suitable delivery model. • To understand the market and readiness to deliver the HAF Programme across Kent. • To explore the most viable commissioning approach to deliver the HAF Programme. • To explore whether recruitment and retention to the model is achievable. Currently, HAF funding is allocated through a grants process by one of KCC’s Local Authority Trading Companies (LATCO). However, KCC is seeking to engage with providers to explore alternative options to meet future delivery requirements. As part of this process a short questionnaire and workshops are available to interested providers, with multiple time slots available. To register an interest in this opportunity providers must submit an ‘Expression of Interest’ (EOI) through the Kent Business Portal and complete the associated ‘Holiday Activities and Food Funding 2025/2026: Market Engagement Questions’. By completing this questionnaire, providers will be able to provide their feedback and, if they wish to, select preferences for dates to attend market engagement workshops. Each workshop will cover the same questions. These workshops will be delivered via Microsoft Teams and will last for 1.5 hours. They are scheduled on the following dates: • Wednesday 1 May 2024 – 10:00-11:30 • Wednesday 1 May 2024 – 13:00-14:30 • Thursday 9 May 2024 – 10:00-11:30 • Friday 10 May 2024 – 10.00-11.30 When selecting a preference for a workshop slot, please state your first and second preference, if possible, and we will try our best to accommodate. If you are unable to attend the workshops and still wish to have an input, please ensure that you complete all sections of the questionnaire and submit this via the Kent Business Portal. Please note that feedback from questionnaires and the workshops will be shared with every provider who has expressed an interest. Please be aware that this PIN will close on Thursday 9th May 2024 at 17:00, and all responses will need to be submitted via the Kent Business Portal by this time.