Decision details

Procurement of consultancy support to deliver Barnsley’s bids to Government Levelling Up Fund and Community Renewal Fund.

UK Government has launched the application processes for two national economic development grant funds: 1) the Community Renewal Fund on March 14 2021; and the Levelling Up Fund on March 26 2021. Barnsley Council has the opportunity to prepare bids for £3m from the Community Renewal Fund – to be submitted in advance of the full Sheffield City Region bid on June 16 2021; and for at least £40m from the Levelling Up Fund, also to be submitted by June 16 2021. 

There is therefore a 12-week window to prepare at least three HM Treasury Green Book-compliant business cases for capital and revenue investment projects across the Borough.

The Funds are competitive amongst local authorities across the country, and high-quality detailed evidence-based cases will be required to support the proposed investments in Barnsley if the bids are to be successful. A full open tender process would be expected to take up a large part of the Government’s very short and fixed bidding window, leaving insufficient time to prepare three full business cases to the quality expected to be required.

Failure to procure the economic consultancy services would mean the Council would have insufficient resource with the necessary expertise to prepare competitive bids for Government funding.

Due to the short-term timescale of the Government’s announcements and bidding window, the tasks required have not been scheduled within internal staff resource allocations. In-house provision is not considered suitable as there is insufficient resource with the necessary expertise to be re-allocated to preparing bids.

A full open tender process is not considered suitable as there is insufficient time within the Government’s bidding window.