NCS announces future providers shortlist

The organisations (see list below) have been named as potential regional service providers by the trust and will compete to deliver NCS in 19 areas across England for three years from 2015. Seven of the 17 organisations hold current NCS delivery contracts.

They can bid to deliver the volunteering programme in any number of regions, but the trust has limited to seven the maximum number of regions that can be won by a single provider.

NCS Trust will evaluate the bids before inviting the top three for each region to be interviewed by a panel of judges.

The 17 shortlisted organisations, which include a range of education and youth service providers, were selected following a procurement process in April, which evaluated existing and potential providers against criteria such as value for money and quality.

However, bids from seven organisations were turned down, NCS Trust confirmed.

Doug Fraley, director of operations at NCS Trust, said: “We’re really pleased to see so many organisations, both new and existing, join the framework and it is particularly great to see organisations who have previously been sub-contract holders stepping up to be potential regional partners.

“We worked hard to make sure we reached out as far as we could to engage potential providers, and the quality of the bids we received was hugely impressive and showed a real commitment to the ambition we have for the programme to grow and improve.”

The successful bidders will be announced in October.

The 17 organisations are:

• By Design Group Ltd
• The Challenge
• CXK Ltd
• Engage4Life Ltd
• The Football League Trust
• Greater London Authority
• Groundwork UK
• Ingeus
• Inspira
• The Lincolnshire and Rutland Education Business Partnership
• New College Nottingham
• PerTemps
• Petroc
• Reed in Partnership
• Seetec
• Twin Training
• A partnership between vInspired and National Youth Agency