Community Right to Challenge - How we deal with your request

We will write to you within 30 working days and let you know when we will decide whether or not to accept your Expression of Interest (EOI).

A Review Panel will consider your EOI. The criteria for refusing an EOI are set out in the statutory guidance. We will write to you to let you know the Panel’s decision. If we decide to accept your EOI, we will let you know when the procurement exercise will start. There will be sufficient time to allow you to prepare your bid.  

The procurement exercise will be carried out in line with our usual procurement procedures which vary according to the value of the contract to be let. The procurement exercise will be open to other bidders. For more details on our procurement procedures, please refer to our procurement pages.

In cases where no EOI are received for a particular service, we will continue with our planned procurement process.

Decisions on Expressions of Interest

Having considered your EOI there are three potential decisions we may reach using the national criteria set out in statutory guidance to make our decision:

Accept

The EOI received presents a strong case that the organisation bidding could provide the service in question. We will then run a procurement exercise to find the best provider.

Accept with modification

We may seek to agree to an EOI being modified if we believe we would otherwise reject it. If an agreement cannot be reached, we may reject the EOI.

Reject

The Government has set out a series of reasons why an EOI can be rejected. We will reject an EOI if:

1. the EOI does not comply with any of the requirements specified in the Act or in regulations
2. the relevant body provides information in the EOI which the relevant authority considers to be inadequate or inaccurate.
3. the relevant authority considers, based on the information in the EOI, that the relevant body or, where applicable a) any member of the consortium of which it is a part, or b) any sub-contractor referred to in the EOI is not suitable to provide or assist in providing the relevant service
4. the expression of interest relates to a relevant service where a decision, made in writing, has been taken by the relevant authority to stop providing that service
5. the EOI relates to a relevant service a) provided in whole or in part by, or on behalf of, the relevant authority to persons who are also in receipt of a service provided or arranged by an NHS body which is integrated with the relevant service, and b) the continued integration of such services is, in the opinion of the relevant authority, critical to the wellbeing of those persons
6. the relevant service is already the subject of a procurement exercise
7. the relevant authority and a third party have entered into negotiations for provision of the service, where negotiations are at least in part conducted in writing
8. the relevant authority has published its intention to consider the provision of the relevant service by a body that two or more specified employees of that authority propose to establish
9. the relevant authority considers that the EOI is frivolous or vexatious
10. the relevant authority considers that acceptance of the EOI is likely to lead to contravention of an enactment or other rule of law or a breach of statutory duty.

If we decide to reject an EOI, we have a legal duty to publish the decision and the reasons for that decision online. We will notify the groups who have submitted an EOI of the decision.