Bournemouth and Poole General Advice Service

Bournemouth Borough Council and the Borough of Poole will be jointly going out to tender for it is General Advice Service. Currently both Councils pay £119,000 per annum for their 2 separate contracts. Contract length and ongoing funding is to be discussed as part of the Market engagement event below.

This Service will provide free, confidential, impartial, holistic and independent advice which enables local residents of Bournemouth and Poole to deal with a wide range of issues. The aim of the service is to ensure that individuals are not detrimentally affected through:

• lack of knowledge of their rights and responsibilities • lack of the services available, through an inability to express their needs effectively In addition, we require the service to equally exercise a responsible influence in the development of social policies and services both locally and nationally.

The Service will provide a range of general and specialist advice including but not limited to: Debt & financial matters; welfare benefits; housing; family & personal matters; advocacy; immigration and citizenship; consumer rights etc We hope to be delivering the new contract from 1 April 2018.

The subject matter of this Future Opportunity Notice is for the provision of a Bournemouth and Poole General Advice Service. This Future Opportunity Notice has been published to provide market awareness of the opportunity. It is anticipated that the tender documents will be issued at the end of October 2017. Suppliers can express an interest in the opportunity through the Council's eTendering website; www.supplyingthesouthwest.org.uk . Suppliers that express an interest through the Councils eTendering website will be automatically invited to the opportunity when the tender documents are published at the end of October. The tender documents will provide full details on the requirements for the contract. This Future Opportunity Notice is a soft market test only; publication of an OJEU Contract Notice and call for competition will be conducted once the scope of the required service is fully defined and approved.

Additional information: As part of this tender exercise we will be holding a Market Engagement Event to share further details about what are requirements and funding arrangements are. The meeting is as follows: Tuesday 19 September 2017 Time: 9:45am Coffee and Registration, 10am start Location: Committee Suite, Borough of Poole Offices, Civic Centre There will be an overview presentation, followed by question and answers. If any individual Provider would like to have a one to one interview please ask for a time-slot when confirming your attendance at the event. If you are interested in attending this information sharing event, please can you email Hayley Langhor to reserve your place: [email protected] If you are unable to attend this event it will not preclude you from participating in the tender, but please ensure that you express your interest. If you should have any further questions please email Hayley where the information will be collated and then shared with all organisations after the event, along with the presentation slides. If you would like to have further information on the opportunity before expressing an interest, please e-mail [email protected] . Please provide your contact information in your e-mail and a member of the Project Team will contact your company for an informal discussion on the opportunity prior to the tender documents being issued. Please note that any discussions regarding the opportunity will only take place prior to the tender documents being issued. Once the OJEU Contract Notice and tender documents have been issued, all communication with the Council will be through the Councils eTendering portal.