Financial Advisors Support for Prison Estate Transformation Programme 2023

Award outcome

Description

HMPPS continue to require specialist support to deliver mini competitions to operate prisons delivered under the Prison Operator Services Framework (POSF/the Framework). External financial advice from a company like this provides the SRO, CFO, AO and SoS with additional assurance on financial liabilities and risks proposed through the contract, payment mechanism and other project documentation and the wider economic uncertainty make this kind of rigour all the more important. The Contract extension issue is not due to an extension of the cost value but due to the Authority needing additional time because delays to delivering the operator competition pipeline that have resulted in the contract timing out. The total spend under the contract to date is significantly lower than originally expected because scope of EY's contract included advice on PF2 before it was removed as a procurement route for delivering new prisons. In 2018, HMPPS ran a mini competition under the CCS Management Consultancy Framework Agreement (RM3745) to procure Financial Services to support the mini competitions under the POSF. Established in 2019, the POSF will run until July 2025. To date, 4 prisons (HMP Five Wells, HMP Fosse Way, HMP & YOI Parc, and HMP Lowdham Grange) have been competed under the Framework with a fifth (HMP Altcourse) to be awarded in November 2022. The Framework's pipeline is expected to include up to 4 more competitions to operate prisons (1 New Prison being built at Full Sutton and 3 existing privately managed PFI prisons (HMP Ashfield, HMP Forest Bank and HMP Rye Hill). The original Financial Services contract awarded to Ernst & Young reached its maximum period of 48 months on 31st August 2022. We are therefore applying for an extension of 7 months made up of an initial extension of 2 months and 30 days from 1 September 2022 to 29 November 2022 and an additional extension of 4 months and 1 day (from 30 November 2022 to 31 March 2023) whilst a new mini competition is run in parallel under the above referenced CCS Management Consultancy Framework to support the future Operator Competitions and development of the next generation of the POSF which expires in July 2025. It is anticipated that a contract will be awarded for these additional Financial Services following a mini competition in February/March 2023 - a separate business case will be submitted for this mini competition. Table 1 below outlines the services EY will be required to provide during the extended contract period to ensure essential business continuity.

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