Council to re-evaluate bids for 0-19 public health services after High Court defeat

Lancashire County Council has announced that it will re-evaluate the two existing bids for public health services for 0 to 19 year olds from Virgin Health Care and a joint bid between Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust.

The move to complete the tendering process follows June’s High Court ruling in favour of the two trusts, with Mr Justice Stuart-Smith concluding that there had been a material breach in the process, “namely that the reasons given by the council for the scores awarded to the trusts and the winning bidder for the quality evaluation questions were insufficient in law”.

The county council had intended to award the contract to Virgin Care.

Lancashire said this week that following the judge’s ruling, the scoring and moderation stages would be re-run with a new independent panel, which would make the decision over who will be awarded the contract.

The county council has also agreed to make a payment towards the health trusts' costs for the legal challenge. “Although the total costs for the case are still being finalised, it is anticipated that the figure Lancashire County Council will need to pay will be in the region of £200k which would be around 75% of the total costs,” it said.

Cllr Shaun Turner, cabinet member for health and wellbeing at Lancashire, said: "We will now be able to move forward to finalise this procurement process and we have also agreed to pay 75% of the trusts' legal costs for this case, which will mean we do not have to go back to court.

"Where services such as the 0-19 public health services are not being delivered in house, we are under a legal duty to open them up to competition; and the decision to do so in this case was in no way political.

"The existing contract with the trusts does not expire until March 2019 so the public can be reassured that there will be no disruption to these important services.”