NCS announces future regional providers

The youth and education sector organisations (see below) were chosen following a bidding process that saw 17 organisations compete for contracts to deliver NCS in 19 regions across England.

Ingeus is the only organisation to join NCS for the first time and has been awarded contracts for three regions – the North West, East Midlands and East of England.

Four of the successful organisations had previously been local delivery partners, supporting regional providers to deliver NCS on the ground.

Youth organisation The Challenge has won the largest number of regional contracts and will deliver NCS in seven regions. The organisation has delivered NCS in five regions since 2012.

Meanwhile, five organisations that have delivered NCS since 2012 have retained their contracts as regional providers.

A total of 24 organisations applied to deliver NCS when the procurement process was launched in January, but bids from seven were turned down following an evaluation in April, which assessed existing and potential providers against criteria such as value for money and quality.

The remaining 17 bidders then took part in a series of mini-competitions and were interviewed by NCS Trust’s senior management team.

Doug Fraley, director of operations at NCS Trust, said the final 10 organisations displayed a real passion for delivering NCS.

He said: “We are confident that we have an excellent network in place with which we can rapidly grow the programme and ensure that NCS can continue to reach as many young people as possible across the country.

“Beneath these 10 providers, 220 organisations currently work to deliver NCS at a local level and we hope to see this network grow as the programme expands over the coming years.”

In September, Serco, the largest provider of NCS, confirmed that it had not reapplied to deliver the volunteering programme and that it will end its involvement in the scheme in September 2015, after next year’s NCS summer scheme has finished.

The organisations selected to deliver NCS from 2015 to 2018 are:

• The Challenge
• CXK Ltd
• Engage4Life Ltd
• The Football League Trust
• Ingeus
• Inspira
• The Lincolnshire and Rutland Education Business Partnership
• A partnership between National Youth Agency and vInspired
• PerTemps
• Reed in Partnership