Unscheduled Dental Care services for NHS England & NHS Improvement South East

This notice is placed in order to facilitate early engagement with potential providers, and relates only to a pre-procurement market sounding questionnaire.

NHS England and NHS Improvement - South East (NHSE/I) are seeking to commission Unscheduled Dental Care services (UDC) in the South East region, and will be conducting a recommissioning process to award new contracts for service commencement from April 2024.

The aims for UDC provision are:

1. Increase access to urgent dental care for patients across the South East region 2. A more convenient service for patients providing in-hours care at more local locations 3. Remove inequalities in unscheduled dental care provision across the South East

A memorandum of information has been attached to this notice to provide further indicative information about the proposed service.

The commissioner anticipates that UDC services will involve three main elements, these are:

1. A dental clinical assessment service 2. Provision of in-hours face to face appointments 3. Provision of out of hours face to face appointments

Interested providers with the capability and capacity to provide one or more UDC elements are asked to complete and submit a market sounding questionnaire via email to [email protected] by 12 Noon on Monday 21st March 2022, with the subject 'Market Sounding Questionnaire - Unscheduled Dental Care'.

This process is being carried out by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW) on behalf of the Commissioners.

Additional information: This notice is an information gathering exercise rather than a call for competition in its own right, and therefore publication or response does not commit NHSEI or respondents to a future procurement, nor provide any process exemptions or preferential treatment to any parties expressing an interest. Commissioners are looking to establish what interest there might be in providing such a service from suitably qualified, capable and competent organisations.

NHSEI will not be liable for costs incurred by any interested party in participating in this exercise. Interested parties should note that a response to this notice does not guarantee an automatic invitation to any subsequent formal procurement, which the commissioners will consider in due course.

The services are healthcare services falling within Schedule 3 to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations") which are not subject to the full regime of the Regulations, but is instead governed by the "Light Touch Regime" contained within Chapter 3, Section 7 of the Regulations (Regulations 74 to 77).