DD2470 Round 2 & 3 of the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme

The Mayor approved the undertaking of activity to procure external support to fill gaps in in-house resources to support the Procurement of the GLA European Social Fund Programme (under cover of MD2375).

The Mayor’s ESF 2019-2023 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 is 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.

Round 1 of the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 launched in December 2018 and sought to award 32 contracts with a total value of £59.5 million. During this phase 19 contracts were awarded, valued at £32 million.

Following feedback from Round 1 Procurement the ESF Co-Financing Organisation (CFO) will be awarding the remaining funding through an open and competitive grants award process (except the remaining two Targeted not in education, employment, or training (NEET) projects which will be contracts for services awarded via a procurement process).

External support is required to work with GLA officers in supporting the procurement/grant award process of Rounds 2, and 3 of the Mayor’s ESF 2019-23 Programme, specifically in scoring and moderating the bids submitted for these two rounds. There are insufficient resources within the Skills & Employment Unit to cover this discrete piece of work. GLA officers are currently working to full capacity on the development of ESF “2014-20” Projects and the grant award processes running in tandem and the management of a number of AEB Procured and ESF Projects in delivery.

This DD seeks approval for expenditure of up to £75,000 on the proposed external support, namely the appointment of a contractor who will 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 ten bids per project (19 contracts), and 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.

100% of the expenditure of up to £75, 000 is eligible to be re-claimed from the ESF Management and Administration budget, therefore there will not be an impact on the GLA budget. This was approved by the Mayor under cover of MD2375.

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.

Once the procurement activity has been completed, a Contract Award Recommendation will be submitted to the Assistant Director – Skills & Employment to approve the appointment of the successful contractor before the contract is signed in line with the signatory permissions for formal documents set out in ‘Mayoral Decision Making in GLA’.

The appointed contractor will work alongside GLA officers and TFL procurement officers, including attending GLA run ‘Scorer Training Session’s’ to score and moderate all bids submitted under the Round 2 grant award process and Round 3 grant award process /procurement in order to award the grants/contracts for services by 1 August 2020.

The appointed Contractor will work with GLA officers and TFL procurement officers to ensure all processes are ESF compliant.

The appointed contractor will enable the GLA to meet the required Go-Live date of 1 August 2020. This will ensure that successful providers will have sufficient delivery time to meet performance targets.

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; and
• foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

Relevant protected characteristics are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

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.

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 (BAME) backgrounds, people with disabilities and people in low paid or low skilled jobs. All projects include targets for engaging and supporting disabled people, 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.

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.

The AEB Procured provision is being used as match funding for the ESF Management & Administrative (M&A) costs, therefore the M&A is 100% ESF-funded. Up to 10% of the value of 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 £6.5 million. Based on current estimates, GLA officers do not anticipate that the full £6.5 million will be required for M&A, but the situation will be reviewed once the current procurement process has been completed and any potential underspend may be reallocated to project delivery at a later stage.

The ESF Programme has a hard delivery deadline of 30 June 2023. To ensure that providers successful in Rounds 2 and 3 have sufficient time to get their delivery up and running, and achieve results, it is 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 may impact on the GLA’s overall achievement of ESF performance targets.

There are no conflicts of interest to declare from those involved in the drafting or clearance of this decision.

Approval is being sought for expenditure of up to £75,000 on external support for the procurement of Rounds 2 and 3 of the Mayor’s European Social Fund 2019-23 Programme, this was approved under cover of MD2375.

Expenditure for this will be contained within the ESF Management and Administration Budget.

The foregoing sections of this report indicate that the decisions requested of the Director concern the exercise of the GLA’s general powers, falling within the GLA’s statutory powers to do such things considered to further or which are facilitative of, conducive or incidental to the promotion of economic development and wealth creation, social development or the promotion of the improvement of the environment in Greater London; and in formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the Authority’s related statutory duties to:

- pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people;

- consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom; and

- consult with appropriate bodies.

In taking the decisions requested, the Director must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty - namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Director should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.

The services required must be procured by TfL Commercial in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code and officers must ensure that contracts are put in place between and executed by the GLA and the contractors before the commencement of the services.

GLA staff will work with TfL Procurement to procure external support prior to the Round 2 deadline for submission of bids (3 April 2020). An expression of interest has been issued by TfL Procurement to gauge interest in this work.

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.

The appointed contractor will enable the GLA to meet the required Go-Live date of 1 August 2020.