ADD2557 Support to score and moderate Mayor’s ESF Academies Programme

1.1. MD2375 approves the activity to procure external support to fill gaps in in-house resources to support the procurement of the GLA ESF Programme.

1.2. The Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme is a £71m programme, match-funded by an equivalent proportion of the Adult Education Budget (AEB) Procured budget, planned for delivery over four years (2019-2023). It was designed to achieve over 30,000 participant starts for a range of skills and employment interventions for the benefits of disadvantaged groups of Londoners in the labour market.

1.3. MD2878 approves up to £6.7m of unallocated ESF Funding to deliver the ESF Academies Programme. A report was approved by the Skills for Londoners Programmes Board on the 1 February 2022 seeking approval to use further unallocated ESF funding to fund additional grants for the ESF Academies Programme. This report will be adapted into an MD that will ask the Mayor to approve the use of any underspend which may be identified from the GLA Co-Financing Organisation’s ESF programme allocation, (the original expenditure of which was previously approved under MD2375, MD2011, and MD1642) to fund additional ESF Academies projects. This will be in addition to the already approved £6.7m referenced above.

1.4. External support is required to work with GLA officers in supporting the Grant Award Process of the ESF Academies Programme of the Mayor’s ESF Co-Financing 2019-23 Programme, specifically in scoring and moderating the bids submitted. There are insufficient resources within the Skills & Employment Unit to cover this discreet piece of work as GLA officers are currently working to full capacity on the development of AEB Bootcamps and the Mayor’s Academies Quality Mark grant award processes running in tandem and the management of a number of AEB Procured and ESF projects in delivery.

1.5. This ADD seeks approval for expenditure of up to £50,000 on the proposed external support. The budget approval required for the appointment of a contractor to appoint and co-ordinate ‘scorers’ to score, moderate, summarise and present final scores to the GLA for the bids submitted. Estimated expenditure is based on receiving an estimated 15 bids per project x 6 projects = 90 bids. Two scorers per bid, working half a day per bid on a daily rate of £300. The total estimated expenditure also includes management cost, VAT and some contingency in case a higher volume of bids are received.

1.6. MD2375 approves 100 per cent of costs claimable from ESF as part of the ESF M&A budget therefore there won’t be an impact on GLA budgets.

1.7. The above-mentioned support will be procured using the project management call-off framework (“Framework Agreement for the provision of Grants and Programme Services Administration Services”) and will be undertaken in consultation with Transport for London (TfL) Procurement.

2.1. The appointed contractor will work alongside GLA/TfL Procurement officers and will attend GLA-run ‘Scorer Training Session’s’ to score and moderate all bids submitted under the ESF Academies Grant Award process, in order to award the Grants by 1 July 2022.

2.2. The appointed contractor will work with the GLA and TfL Procurement officers to ensure all processes are ESF compliant.

2.3. The appointed contractor will enable the GLA to meet the required Go-Live date of 1 July 2022. This will ensure that successful providers will have sufficient delivery time to meet performance targets.

3.1. Section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010 provides that, in the exercise of their functions, public authorities – of whom the Mayor is one – must have due regard to the need to:
• eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Equality Act 2010
• advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
• foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
3.2. Relevant protected characteristics are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

3.3. The Mayor is required to comply with the duty to have due regard detailed above in making any decisions relating to the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme.

3.4. The aim of ESF is to improve opportunities for people who are disadvantaged in the labour market. The Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme will support Londoners who need skills and training to access a job or progress in work, including people with no basic skills, lone parents, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities and people in low paid or low skilled jobs. All projects include targets for engaging and supporting disabled people, Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people and women, those groups having been identified in the “Skills Strategy for Londoners: Evidence base” (GLA, June 2018) as having lower than average employment rates.

3.5. Contractual agreements with delivery partners and contractors for the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme will require providers to comply with all applicable existing and future equal opportunities laws, regulations and guidance, and GLA guidance in relation to race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief.

4.1. The AEB Procured provision is being used as match funding for the ESF M&A costs, therefore the M&A is 100 per cent ESF. Up to 10 per cent of the value of the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme; (estimated at £64.5m) may be claimed to cover the M&A costs of the programme. The maximum budget available for M&A costs up to 30 September 2023 is therefore approximately £6.5m. Based on current estimates, GLA officers do not anticipate that the full £6.5m will be required for M&A, but the situation will be reviewed once the current grant award process has been completed and any potential underspend may be reallocated to project delivery at a later stage.

4.2. The ESF Programme has a hard delivery deadline of 30 September 2023. To ensure that providers successful in the ESF Academies grant award process have sufficient time to get their delivery up and running and achieve results, it’s crucial to give them as long a delivery period as possible. Without external support scoring and moderation of bids would be delayed by an anticipated three months. This will impact on the GLA’s overall achievement of ESF performance targets and possibly make the programme unviable.

4.3. There are no conflicts of interest to note for any of the officers involved in the drafting or clearance of this decision.

Approval is being sought for expenditure of up to £50,000 on external resources to support the procurement of the GLA ESF, this was approved under MD2375.

5.2 Expenditure for this will be contained within the ESF M&A budget funded by the ESF.

6.1. GLA staff will work with TfL Procurement to procure external support prior to the ESF Academies deadline for submission of bids (March 2022).

6.2. The appointed contractor will resource scorers and manage the end-to-end process for the completion of the tasks as directed by the GLA. A minimum of two scorers will be required to score each bid.

6.3. Appointed contractor will enable the GLA to meet the required Go-Live date of 1 July 2022.

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