Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities (Lot 4): How Providers Win a Place

Brighton & Hove City Council is re-running Lot 4 of its Day Opportunities procurement: high care and support for adults with learning disabilities who may also be autistic. It is a Procurement Act 2023 open procedure, scored 100% on quality, with placements made on a spot-purchase basis over a contract of up to 8 years.

If you run day services or community day opportunities for adults with a learning disability and complex needs in or around Brighton & Hove, this is the route onto the Council's approved list. This analysis sets out what the tender requires, how it is scored, the eligibility gates that decide who even gets read, and where providers win or lose. It is written for owners, registered managers and bid leads deciding whether to go for it and how to answer well.

The essentials:

1. Buyer: Brighton & Hove City Council (reference BHCC-039128), re-running Lot 4 only
2. Cohort: adults with learning disabilities who may also be autistic, with high care and support needs and behaviours that may challenge
3. Award: 100% quality. Price is pass/fail. Multiple contracts awarded; placements are spot-purchased by referral
4. Gates: pass the Conditions of Participation, then score at least 3 (Good) on Quality Questions 1-3 and on the pass/fail Building the Right Support question
5. Deadline: tender returns by 10:00 on Friday 24 July 2026

Tender at a glance

Authority: Brighton & Hove City Council

Reference: BHCC-039128 (Preliminary Market Engagement 2025/S 000-046252)

Lot: Lot 4, High Care and Support for Adults with Learning Disabilities who may also be autistic

Procedure: Procurement Act 2023, open procedure

Commercial model: multiple contracts; individual placements spot-purchased by referral, no guaranteed volume

Term: initial 5 years, extensions of up to 3 further years (up to 8 years total)

Award basis: 100% quality; price evaluated pass/fail

Insurance: Public Liability £10m, Employers' Liability £10m, Professional Indemnity £2m

Portals: South East Shared Services (In-Tend), plus registration on the Central Digital Platform

Tender return deadline: 10:00, Friday 24 July 2026

Statutory context: Care Act 2014, Mental Capacity Act 2005, Building the Right Support, Positive Behaviour Support

Why the Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities Lot 4 tender matters now

This is a repeat procurement. The Council first ran Lot 4 in January 2026 and has reopened it to increase the number of providers who can deliver high care and support day opportunities in the city. That is the signal to read: the Council wants more capacity for its most complex learning disability and autism placements, and it is buying on quality rather than price.

The commercial shape is unusual and worth understanding before you invest time. There is no guaranteed volume. The Council awards contracts to every bidder that passes, then buys individual placements on a spot-purchase basis when a person's assessed need arises. Winning a place puts you on the list; the referrals come one person at a time.

Two features change how you should approach it. Price carries no weighting, so a strong, well-evidenced quality answer is the whole game at bid stage. And unlike a CQC-regulated home care contract, this day service is not gated on a CQC rating. Eligibility turns on the Conditions of Participation and your quality scores, which is good news for capable day-service providers who have never held a CQC rating.

Who the service is for: cohort and statutory context

The cohort is adults with learning disabilities who may also be autistic, assessed by the Council as having high care and support needs and behaviours that would be considered complex. The Council defines behaviours that may challenge as communication: a way of expressing hopes, choices, needs or fears, or of managing sensory overwhelm, that can include physical or verbal aggression, self-injury or damage to surroundings.

The statutory frame has to be exact. Placements are made under the Care Act 2014 following assessment. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 and its Code of Practice apply where a person may lack or have fluctuating capacity, with its 5 statutory principles and 2-stage capacity test. Support must be delivered in the least restrictive way, underpinned by a Positive Behaviour Support model on an accredited training programme, and shaped by the national Building the Right Support agenda for people with a learning disability and autistic people.

Getting the cohort language right matters. This is an adult learning disability and autism day service, so children's and Ofsted terminology does not belong anywhere in the answer, and a "capable environment" that reduces the frequency and severity of behaviours that challenge is exactly the framing the Council uses.

The model: flexible day opportunities, not a building

The Council is explicit that it is not offering access to its premises, and that services do not need a building or centre. It wants strength-based, person-centred, outcome-focused activities that build skills, promote independence and support social inclusion, delivered from a base, in the community, or a mix of both.

The activity list is broad: from arts, cooking, gardening and independent travel skills to intensive interaction, sensory sessions, Makaton, supported volunteering and paid work. Providers are encouraged to think beyond the traditional Monday-to-Friday, building-based day centre. Transport, session capacity, staffing ratios and 1:1 support all have to be described in a Service Summary Sheet that sits alongside the quality answers.

The message for bidders is that creativity and genuine community access score better than a room and a rota. If you can evidence flexible delivery that gets people into real settings safely, you are answering the question the Council is actually asking.

Before you bid: the questions to ask yourself

Day opportunities providers waste the most time bidding for contracts they were never eligible for. Run these quick checks first. If the answer is no, fix it before you write a word.

• Do we already deliver day opportunities or day services for adults with a learning disability and autism? You must evidence a track record with a case study in the Procurement Specific Questionnaire, and the Council can reject bids that do not sufficiently show previous delivery. Transferable experience can count, but you have to prove it.
• Can we support people with behaviours that may challenge, using Positive Behaviour Support and least-restrictive practice? The pass/fail Building the Right Support question turns on this, including an example risk management plan and a case study.
• Do we hold, or can we commit to, Public Liability £10m, Employers' Liability £10m and Professional Indemnity £2m? Without them, or a commitment to obtain them, the Council can reject the submission.
• Can we pass the financial standing self-assessment? You calculate a set of ratios from your last two years' accounts in the Document 2A self-assessment. Check the figures before you submit, not after.
• Are we registered on both portals? You need an account on the South East Shared Services (In-Tend) portal and up-to-date core supplier information on the Central Digital Platform.
• Can we complete a Social Value Action Plan and a sustainability answer tied to Brighton & Hove? Social value and sustainability are 20% of the quality score between them, and generic answers that ignore the city score poorly.

If those are all yes, you are eligible and the contract is worth your time. How you then turn eligibility into a top score is a different question, and where a specialist review earns its place.

How the tender is scored: 100% quality, price pass/fail

All of the marks are in the quality answers. Price is submitted and assessed pass/fail, and only comes back into play at the individual placement stage. There are seven quality questions, scored 0 to 4, with the weighted score calculated as your score divided by 4, multiplied by the question weighting.

The weightings, in order of what they are worth:

• Organisational Staffing and Management: 30%. The single biggest block, with a minimum score of 3 to progress.
• Quality Assurance: 20%.
• Service Model: 15%, minimum 3 to progress.
• Your Approach and Values: 15%, minimum 3 to progress.
• Social Value: 10%.
• Sustainability: 10%.
• Building the Right Support: pass/fail, minimum score of 3 to pass, sitting outside the 100%.

The gate that ends most bids is the minimum. You must score at least a 3 (Good) on Questions 1, 2 and 3, and at least a 3 on the Building the Right Support question. Score below that on any of them and the bid is rejected before your other answers are even weighed.

The scoring battlegrounds in depth

Four answers decide the outcome, and they are not evenly weighted.

Organisational Staffing and Management at 30% is where the contract is won or lost. The Council wants a named staffing structure, a business continuity plan, qualifications for key roles, recruitment for values, supervision and reflective practice, a training matrix covering mandatory and specialist training, and real retention figures. Answers that name the roles, the systems and the cycles beat answers that describe a culture.

Quality Assurance at 20% wants your feedback and complaints loop, how you learn from safeguarding and incidents, your governance, how people who use the service shape it, and how you monitor the KPIs in the specification. Building the Right Support, though only pass/fail, fails unprepared bidders: it asks for your experience of behaviours that challenge, an example risk management plan, least-restrictive support, a capable environment, crisis support, use of reviews to reduce restriction, access to PBS roles, and a case study of no more than 500 words.

Service Model and Approach and Values, at 15% each, are where the minimum-3 gate bites. Both reward specificity: a real timetable, named outcome-monitoring tools, a clear account of how the Mental Capacity Act is applied in practice, and a person-centred, strength-based model that shows how people move on towards college, work or greater independence. The discipline that lifts these answers is the same one behind every strong method statement, which our guide to method statements that win care contracts sets out.

The TenderLab perspective: what an evaluator reads first

Evaluators reward answers a panel can verify and score in minutes, and mark down answers that sound good but cannot be checked. Across 200+ submissions in comparable learning disability and autism services, the highest-scoring answers share the same features.

They name the operational detail: the manager with local oversight, the PBS-trained staff, the outcome-monitoring tool, the supervision cycle with dates, the training matrix. They evidence experience with a specific, anonymised case that shows a real person's outcome rather than a claim. They tie social value and sustainability to Brighton & Hove specifically, not to the country in general. And they answer every printed bullet in the order the Council asks, because a missed bullet is a lost mark on a 0 to 4 scale where every point is worth a quarter of the weighting.

The through-line is simple: write for the panel scoring the answer, evidence every claim, and make the person and their outcomes visible on the page.

Common pitfalls that cost providers a place

Four recur in day-opportunities bids.

The first is a thin experience case study that fails the Conditions of Participation before scoring even begins. The second is treating the minimum-3 questions as easy: Service Model, Approach and Values, and Staffing all carry a rejection threshold, and a generic answer to any of them ends the bid. The third is cohort drift: importing children's or Ofsted language, or a residential-care model, into an adult learning disability day service. The fourth is generic social value and sustainability, written for anywhere, when the Council explicitly wants commitments researched for the City of Brighton & Hove and its outcomes.

Underneath all four is the same habit: describing intentions rather than evidencing mechanisms. If you find yourself writing that a service is person-centred without naming how, that is the sentence a lower score is hiding in.

Win-rate playbook: how to hit the standard

A strong day-opportunities bid is built, not written in a rush before a 10am deadline. These moves lift the score.

Lead the 30% staffing answer with named roles, a real training matrix and genuine retention figures. Build the Building the Right Support answer from a real person outward, through PBS, least-restrictive support and a capable environment, with a tight 500-word case study. Write Service Model, Approach and Values to answer every printed bullet and clear the minimum-3 gate comfortably, not by a whisker. Ground social value and sustainability in Brighton & Hove, using the Council's own outcomes and its 2030 carbon-neutral commitment. And before you submit, check the answer against the standard rather than your own optimism.

Two of our own tools do exactly that last step. Our Pre-Submission Review stress-tests a finished bid against how a panel will score it, and Score My Response checks an individual answer before you commit to it. The same evidence-led discipline runs through our work on learning disability and autism contracts: the winning move is named operational evidence and a real person's outcome, not volume of words.

Key facts and how to apply

Tender returns are due by 10:00 on Friday 24 July 2026 through the South East Shared Services (In-Tend) portal, with core supplier information also held on the Central Digital Platform. You submit the online Procurement Specific Questionnaire (Sections 1 and 2), the Quality Questions (Schedule 5), the Service Summary Sheet (Schedule 6), the Pricing Schedule (Schedule 4), the Social Value Action Plan (Appendix C) and the financial self-assessment (Appendix B). Prices stay valid for 180 days.

Award is estimated for 20 August 2026 after an 8-working-day standstill, with contracts commencing 1 September 2026. If you are reading this after the deadline, the Council has reserved the right to reopen the process to award further contracts, and the same analysis applies to the next round and to comparable day-opportunities and learning disability tenders elsewhere.

TenderLab writes specification-mirrored quality answers with named operational evidence, and stress-tests them before you submit. 92% win rate across 200+ UK health and social care submissions, from evaluator-trained writers with care sector experience. TenderLab, Companies House 17184263. Book a free consultation on this tender to talk through your Day Opportunities bid, whether or not we are the right fit for it.

Frequently asked questions

When does the Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities Lot 4 tender close? Tender returns are due by 10:00 on Friday 24 July 2026 through the South East Shared Services portal. Award is estimated for 20 August 2026 after an 8-working-day standstill, with contracts starting on 1 September 2026. The Council has reserved the right to reopen the process to award further contracts later.

Do I need a CQC rating to bid? No. This is a day service, and the tender is not gated on a CQC rating. Eligibility turns on the Conditions of Participation, including financial standing, insurance, data protection and a track-record case study, plus scoring at least 3 on the quality gates. Where personal care is delivered as a regulated activity, registration for that activity still applies.

How is the tender scored? It is scored 100% on quality across six weighted questions, with price assessed pass/fail. Staffing and Management carries 30%, Quality Assurance 20%, Service Model and Approach and Values 15% each, and Social Value and Sustainability 10% each. A separate Building the Right Support question is pass/fail.

What is the minimum score I need? You must score at least a 3 (Good) on Questions 1, 2 and 3, and at least a 3 on the pass/fail Building the Right Support question. Score below 3 on any of these and your bid is rejected before Questions 4 to 6 are evaluated. Questions 4 to 6 carry no minimum score.

Is there guaranteed work if I win? No. The Council awards contracts to all bidders who pass, then buys individual placements on a spot-purchase basis by referral when a person's assessed need arises. There is no guaranteed volume, so winning a place puts you on the list rather than securing set hours.

Can a bid writer help with a day opportunities tender? Yes. The whole award is on quality, so it rewards specification-mirrored answers with named operational evidence, a real case study and social value grounded in Brighton & Hove. A specialist care-sector bid writer builds exactly that, and a pre-submission review catches the gaps that drop a score below the minimum.

Related reading

• How to write method statements that win care contracts
• How to win learning disability and autism supported living contracts
• Should you get your tender reviewed before submission?
• Score My Response: check your answer before you submit
• Pre-Submission Review

Further reading

• Find a Tender: Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities
• Mental Capacity Act 2005
• Building the Right Support (gov.uk)
• Care Act 2014