Cambridgeshire Homecare Framework 2026: How Providers Qualify and Win a Place

The Cambridgeshire Homecare Framework 2026 is a multi-provider framework through which Cambridgeshire County Council will commission regulated homecare for adults aged 18 and over. It is worth an estimated £773.4 million across up to 10 years, is split into 17 lots, and shortlists providers on a completed questionnaire before inviting priced tenders.

If you deliver domiciliary care, live-in care or night support in Cambridgeshire, this is the contract that decides who the Council buys from for the rest of the decade. This analysis sets out what the notice actually says, what has changed since the current framework, how the award maths works, and where providers win or lose their place. It is written for owners, registered managers and bid leads who need to decide, this month, whether to go for it and how.

The five essentials:

1. Buyer: Cambridgeshire County Council
2. Value: £773.4 million excluding VAT over a term of up to 10 years
3. Structure: 17 lots, covering 15 geographic zones plus countywide live-in and night-time care
4. First deadline: Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ) by 19 August 2026, 12:00pm
5. Award model: Price Per Quality Point (PPQP), quality scored out of 100

Tender at a glance

Authority: Cambridgeshire County Council

Reference: 25076 Homecare Framework (Notice 2026/S 000-066926, OCID ocds-h6vhtk-05186c)

Commercial tool: Multi-provider framework agreement

Estimated value: £773,400,000 excluding VAT (£928,080,000 including VAT)

Term: 1 November 2027 to 31 October 2030, with optional extensions to 31 October 2037 (up to 10 years)

Lots: 17 (Lots 1-15 geographic zones, Lot 16a live-in care, Lot 16b night-time care)

Lot limits: bid for up to 8 lots, be awarded up to 4

Procedure: Competitive flexible procedure, Light Touch regime, under the Procurement Act 2023

Enquiry deadline: 7 August 2026, 12:00pm

PSQ (requests to participate) deadline: 19 August 2026, 12:00pm

Estimated award: 15 February 2027

Portal: In-Tend (sell2.in-tend.co.uk/cambridgeshire), listed as "25076 Homecare Framework"

Source: Find a Tender notice 066926-2026

Why this framework matters now

A single framework worth £773.4 million does not come round often, and this one shapes homecare across an entire county for up to a decade. Cambridgeshire is replacing the way it buys care at home, and the providers who secure a place in 2027 will hold the relationships, the packages and the referral flow that decide which businesses grow and which shrink between now and 2037.

Three features make it strategically important. It is large, so a place on it underpins years of predictable volume. It is place-based, so it rewards providers who can prove genuine local delivery rather than a paper presence. And it is being let under a scoring method, Price Per Quality Point, that punishes both weak quality and unsustainable pricing, so it cannot be won by cutting corners on either side. Get the strategy wrong and a qualified, capable provider can still end up with nothing. Get it right and you lock in a decade of council work.

The timing is tight. The Procurement Specific Questionnaire closes on 19 August 2026, and the enquiry deadline is 7 August 2026. That gives providers weeks, not months, to make a go or no-go decision and assemble a clean submission.

What is changing: from countywide bidding to 15 population-based zones

The biggest change is the move away from a single countywide framework to a zoned, place-based model. Under the current arrangement, providers bid to deliver packages across Cambridgeshire. The new framework divides the county into 15 zones of similar population size, each let as its own lot, and adds two countywide lots for live-in and night-time care. Cambridgeshire's Adults and Health committee approved this localised approach for when the existing framework ends, with the new framework implemented from 1 November 2027.

The zones are built around neighbourhood-level population areas rather than existing district and city council boundaries. That matters for two reasons. It spreads capacity so that rural areas are not starved of provision while providers cluster around Cambridge, and it makes local knowledge a scored asset rather than a nice-to-have. A provider who can describe how it staffs a round across the Fens, manages travel time between villages and works with the community anchors in a specific zone is answering the question the Council is actually asking.

The Council has been explicit about the intent behind the change: deliver place-based services, strengthen local care markets across Cambridgeshire, improve consistency and quality, support a sustainable and resilient provider base, embed a strengths-based and preventative approach, and deliver value for money while maintaining high standards. Every one of those aims points the same way. This is a framework that wants committed local providers, not national operators bolting on another county.

The 17 lots in full

The framework runs across 17 lots. Lots 1 to 15 are geographic zones, each with a capped number of providers. Lot 16a covers countywide live-in care, and Lot 16b covers countywide night-time care, including both sleeping and waking nights. The provider cap is the number that really governs your odds, because your competition is not the whole county, it is the small field fighting for places in the specific zones you choose.

| Lot | Zone | Max providers | |---|---|---| | 1 | Cambridge East (C1) | 6 | | 2 | Cambridge North (C2) | 5 | | 3 | Cambridge West (C3) | 7 | | 4 | East Cambridgeshire North (EC1) | 8 | | 5 | East Cambridgeshire South (EC2) | 5 | | 6 | West Fenland, Wisbech area (F1) | 7 | | 7 | Central Fenland, March area (F2) | 7 | | 8 | East Fenland, Chatteris area (F3) | 4 | | 9 | Huntingdonshire East (H1) | 9 | | 10 | Huntingdonshire North (H2) | 7 | | 11 | Huntingdonshire South (H3) | 7 | | 12 | Huntingdonshire West (H4) | 5 | | 13 | South Cambridgeshire East (SC1) | 6 | | 14 | South Cambridgeshire North (SC2) | 9 | | 15 | South Cambridgeshire West (SC3) | 7 | | 16a | Live-in care (countywide) | Not capped by zone | | 16b | Night-time care, sleeping and waking (countywide) | Not capped by zone |

Read the caps carefully. East Fenland (Chatteris) takes only 4 providers, so it is the tightest field on the framework, while Huntingdonshire East and South Cambridgeshire North each take up to 9. A high provider cap does not guarantee an easier win, because larger zones attract more bidders, but the ratio of places to likely applicants in your target zones is the single most useful number to model before you commit.

Who the framework is for: cohort and statutory context

The framework covers regulated homecare for adults aged 18 and over across Cambridgeshire. The stated cohort includes older people, people with physical disabilities, people with learning disabilities, and people with mental health and autism needs. In practice that means personal care in someone's own home, which is a regulated activity under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Two frameworks of law sit behind every answer you will write. The Care Act 2014 sets the wellbeing duty, the strengths-based and preventative approach the Council names in its scope, and its market-shaping role under Section 5. The Mental Capacity Act 2005, with its 5 statutory principles and 2-stage capacity test, governs consent and decision-making for a cohort that includes people with learning disabilities, autism and mental health needs. Quality responses need to read as though a registered manager wrote them, not a bid library, because evaluators can tell the difference within a paragraph.

The breadth of cohort also shapes registration. A provider whose CQC registration covers only older people will not be credible for the learning disability, autism and mental health elements the Council names. Aligning your regulated scope to the client groups in your target lots is part of qualifying, not an afterthought.

The procedure: a two-stage competitive flexible procedure under the Light Touch regime

The procurement runs under the Procurement Act 2023 as a competitive flexible procedure in the Light Touch regime, the route health and social care services take because their CPV codes sit in Schedule 1. Light Touch gives the Council latitude to design its own process, and it has chosen two stages.

Stage 1 is shortlisting. Applicants express interest and submit a completed Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ). The Council uses the PSQ to compile a shortlist of suitably experienced and qualified bidders who meet the minimum criteria in the tender documents. This stage is pass or fail: you either clear the bar or you do not progress.

Stage 2 is the Invitation to Tender (ITT). Only shortlisted applicants are invited to submit a priced tender by the deadline, and this is where the scored quality questions and the pricing schedule live. The practical consequence is that the 19 August 2026 PSQ deadline is the one in front of you now, and the scored quality battle comes later for those who get through. Treating the PSQ as a formality is the fastest way to end a bid before it starts.

Eligibility: what you need to qualify at the PSQ

The exact minimum criteria are set out in the PSQ and tender documents on the In-Tend portal, and every provider must read them in full before relying on any summary. Based on the Council's published approach, expect the qualifying tests to centre on the following.

CQC registration and rating. Cambridgeshire has signalled that it expects providers to hold CQC registration for homecare rated Good or better. If your latest rating is Requires Improvement, do not assume you are excluded, but do confirm the precise wording in the PSQ, because a rating threshold is a pass or fail gate that decides eligibility before any quality marks are awarded. Our guide on what CQC rating you need to bid explains how ratings interact with council thresholds.

Registration aligned to the cohort. Your regulated activities and client groups should match the people the lot serves, across older people, physical disability, learning disability, autism and mental health as relevant.

Local office or presence. This is a place-based framework, so evidence of a genuine local base, or a credible plan to establish one, carries weight. A registered address 100 miles away with no local infrastructure is a weak position for a zone in the Fens or Huntingdonshire.

Experience and capacity. Expect to evidence relevant homecare experience and the workforce capacity to deliver the volume in your chosen zones, including recruitment and retention data.

Financial standing, insurance and mandatory policies. Standard selection-stage checks on economic and financial standing, insurance cover and the policies a homecare provider must hold. Gather and date-check these now, because an expired certificate discovered the night before the deadline is a self-inflicted fail.

How you win a place: the Price Per Quality Point method

Cambridgeshire is awarding on Price Per Quality Point, or PPQP. Your total quality score is out of 100. The Council divides your price by your quality score and multiplies by 100 to give your PPQP. Bidders are ranked from lowest PPQP to highest, and the lowest scores are allocated to their preferred zones first, up to the maximum of four zones per provider. Once a zone's places are full, lower-ranked bidders do not get in, even if they met the minimum criteria.

Lower is better, and that has a sharp strategic consequence. A high quality score does not win on its own, and neither does the cheapest price. The formula rewards the best ratio of the two. To make the mechanism concrete, take a simplified illustration. A provider quoting £25.00 an hour with a quality score of 80 scores a PPQP of 31.25. A provider quoting £26.50 with a quality score of 95 scores 27.89 and ranks ahead, despite being more expensive, because its quality is strong enough to justify the price. A third provider quoting £23.00 with a quality score of 62 scores 37.10 and ranks behind both, because cutting price without quality does not pay. These numbers are illustrative, not from the tender, but they show why quality and price have to be built together, not in separate rooms.

The allocation rule adds a second layer. Because providers are placed into their preferred zones in rank order until zones fill, your ranking and your zone choices interact. A mid-ranked provider that targeted four realistic zones can secure four places, while a higher-ranked provider that chased the four most contested zones can be squeezed out of some of them. Zone selection is therefore a scored decision in its own right.

Pricing realism: PPQP, the Homecare Association minimum price and the funding gap

PPQP tempts providers to shave the rate, and that is exactly where bids come unstuck. The Homecare Association sets a minimum price for homecare that reflects legally compliant pay, travel time, mileage, wage on-costs and a minimum contribution to business running costs. For April 2025 to March 2026 that minimum price is £32.14 an hour in England, while the average fee rate actually paid by councils sits around £24.10 an hour. That gap of roughly £8 an hour is the single biggest commercial risk in homecare bidding.

The lesson for a PPQP framework is not to price at the Homecare Association figure regardless, because you must remain competitive within whatever the Council's model allows. The lesson is to price to deliver. A rate that cannot fund the travel time between villages in a rural zone, the supervision your quality answers promise, the training your cohort requires and the on-call cover for urgent packages creates a contradiction an experienced evaluator will spot, and a service you cannot sustain once packages land. Under-pricing to force the PPQP ratio down wins the place and loses the contract.

Two lots need particular pricing care. Lot 16a live-in care and Lot 16b night-time care carry their own cost structures. Night-time care spans both sleeping and waking nights, and the pricing assumptions for sleep-in shifts, waking nights, weekends and bank holidays have to be modelled explicitly rather than folded into a single hourly rate. If you bid these lots, make sure the price reflects the real staffing model.

The five things Cambridgeshire says it wants from providers

The notice is unusually direct about what the Council is looking for. These five requirements are the quality battlegrounds, and the ITT questions at Stage 2 will test each of them. Your evidence has to be ready before the questions arrive.

Quality and safeguarding standards. The Council wants strong, evidenced quality and safeguarding, which maps to the CQC Single Assessment Framework and its quality statements. Under the Care Act 2014 the local authority makes or causes a safeguarding enquiry to be made; your role is to secure immediate safety, record, refer, share information and support the enquiry. Getting that division of duties right, rather than claiming the provider leads a Section 42 enquiry, is what makes a safeguarding answer read as competent.

Flexible, responsive delivery, including hospital discharge and urgent care. Cambridgeshire wants providers who can take urgent packages and support discharge, which means real capacity, on-call cover and fast start times. Evidence of accepting a package within a defined window, and of holding capacity for urgent referrals, will do far more here than a paragraph about being responsive.

Workforce stability, development and fair pay. The scope names workforce stability and fair pay explicitly. Expect to evidence retention rates, pay against the real Living Wage, career pathways, training investment and how you reduce reliance on agency staff. Vague commitments score nothing; numbers and named programmes score.

Collaborative working with the Council, NHS partners and the voluntary sector. Place-based delivery is a stated aim, so show named routes into local system working: the community teams, the discharge pathways, the voluntary organisations in your zones. A promise to attend meetings is not partnership working.

Innovation in outcomes-focused care. The Council wants a strengths-based, preventative approach that reduces, delays or prevents need in line with the Care Act. Tie any technology, reablement model or monitoring approach directly to a measurable outcome for the person, not to the tool itself.

The scoring battlegrounds in depth

The five requirements above become scored questions at ITT stage. The exact questions and weightings sit in the tender documents released to shortlisted bidders, so treat the following as the operational depth each theme will demand rather than the printed wording.

On safeguarding and quality, expect to describe your governance cycle: who audits what, how often, how findings are actioned and how learning is embedded. Name the systems, the audit frequencies and the escalation routes. Anchor the answer to the CQC quality statements and the Care Act, and show how a concern moves from the front line to the local authority and back into a protection plan.

On responsiveness and hospital discharge, expect to describe your acceptance process for urgent packages, your on-call structure out of hours, and how you flex a rota when a discharge lands at short notice. A worked example of a fast start, anonymised and specific, is worth more than any adjective.

On workforce, expect retention and turnover figures, sickness data, your recruitment pipeline, induction and mandatory training, supervision frequency and your progression pathway. This is where fair pay and stability are evidenced with numbers.

On partnership, expect named relationships across the NHS, primary care, community health and the voluntary sector, with examples of joint working that changed an outcome. On innovation, expect a preventative or reablement model tied to a measurable reduction in need, hospital admission or package hours.

The TenderLab perspective: what an evaluator reads first

Evaluators do not read your answer looking for reasons to award marks. They read looking for the thing that lets them stop reading. Across 200-plus submissions, the responses that score in the top band on a homecare framework share three habits.

They answer the exact question in the exact structure the ITT sets, in the Council's own terminology, so the evaluator can find each scored point without hunting. They lead with the mechanism, not the value: a named role, a named system, a timeframe and an audit route, followed by the outcome for the person. And they localise. A homecare framework this size is about place, so an answer that shows you understand delivery across Fenland market towns and rural Huntingdonshire reads very differently from one that could have been submitted anywhere.

Our writers know this because most of them ran the services they now write about. They have managed rotas across rural rounds, led safeguarding responses, prepared services for inspection and sat opposite commissioners. That is the difference between an answer that describes how a service genuinely operates and one an evaluator has seen a hundred times.

Common pitfalls that cost providers a place

The traps on a PPQP homecare framework are predictable, which means they are avoidable.

Chasing every zone is the first. Bidding for 8 lots to be awarded 4 sounds like sensible hedging, but spreading a thin evidence base across busy zones you cannot staff produces a weak price and a weak mobilisation answer everywhere. Target the zones you can genuinely resource.

Pricing to win rather than pricing to deliver is the second. The PPQP formula tempts providers to shave the rate to improve the ratio. A rate that will not fund the travel time, supervision and training your quality answers promise creates a contradiction an experienced evaluator will spot, and a service you cannot sustain once packages land.

Generic quality answers are the third. Words like robust, person-centred and flexible score nothing on their own. Every claim needs a named mechanism, a role, a frequency or a measurable outcome immediately behind it. Read our guide on how to write method statements that win care contracts for the pattern that works.

Leaving the PSQ late is the fourth. Providers treat the questionnaire as a formality and discover a missing policy, an expired insurance certificate or a CQC evidence gap 48 hours before the deadline. The PSQ is pass or fail. A single gap ends the bid before the quality stage begins.

Ignoring the cohort split is the fifth. A single generic homecare answer will not satisfy a Council commissioning for older people, physical disability, learning disability, autism and mental health in one framework. Where your lots touch specialist cohorts, the evidence has to reflect it.

Win-rate playbook: how to qualify and score

Seven moves put a Cambridgeshire homecare bid in contention.

1. Fix your zone strategy first. Map the provider caps against your real staffing and geography. Choose up to four winnable zones and build the whole bid around servicing them.
2. Clear the PSQ this week. Pull your policies, insurances, CQC position and financial evidence now. Confirm every mandatory document exists, is current and is portal-ready before 19 August.
3. Price to the model, not the competition. Cost travel time, supervision, training and on-call into a sustainable rate, benchmarked against the Homecare Association minimum price, then check every method statement commitment is affordable under it.
4. Evidence hospital discharge and urgent capacity. Show your acceptance window, on-call structure and how you flex a rota, with a real example of a fast start.
5. Prove workforce stability with numbers. Retention percentage, real Living Wage position, agency-reduction trajectory and a named career pathway beat any adjective.
6. Localise every answer. Name the zones, the rural rounds, the local NHS and voluntary partners. Show you understand delivery in Fenland and Huntingdonshire, not homecare in the abstract.
7. Have the QA gate before you submit. A separate reviewer scoring your draft against the ITT criteria catches the gaps evaluators would have marked you down for. This is exactly what our pre-submission tender review does.

We used exactly this approach on the Essex Live at Home Framework 2025, where a provider with no prior Essex footprint won 5 Tier 2 lots against established incumbents. Zone discipline, sustainable pricing and localised evidence are what moved those answers into the top band.

Zone strategy: how to choose your four lots

Because the framework caps providers per zone and lets you win up to four, zone choice is where the bid is won or lost before a word of the ITT is written. Start with where you already deliver. A zone where you hold existing packages, staff and local relationships is a zone where your quality answers are true and your price is deliverable. Layer on the provider caps: a tightly capped zone like East Fenland with 4 places rewards a strong local incumbent and punishes a speculative entrant, while a larger-capped zone spreads the risk but attracts more bidders.

Then test staffing honestly. Winning a zone you cannot staff is worse than not bidding it, because failure to deliver on a place-based framework damages the relationship that feeds every future package. Model the travel time and rurality: a compact urban zone around Cambridge is a different operational proposition from a dispersed Fenland or Huntingdonshire zone where mileage and unpaid travel time erode the rate. Finally, decide whether the countywide live-in and night-time lots fit your model, because they are separate operational and pricing propositions that reward providers who genuinely run those services.

Mobilisation and contract management under local government reorganisation

Winning a place is the start, not the finish. The notice sets a framework commencement of 1 November 2027, with award estimated in February 2027, so successful providers have a real mobilisation window rather than a scramble. Use it to confirm staffing against your awarded zones, set up call monitoring and rostering, align your care records and eMAR, and build the local partnerships your bid promised before the first package transfers.

One factor makes Cambridgeshire different, and the Council has flagged it in the notice: Local Government Reorganisation. Cambridgeshire is a two-tier area, and the Government is moving two-tier areas to unitary councils. A consultation on the future structure of local government in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ran from February to March 2026 on four options put forward by local councils, with an outcome expected in summer 2026. New councils are expected to operate in shadow form from May 2027 before full implementation, and Cambridgeshire already sits within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority devolution arrangements. You can read the Government's proposals on the local government reorganisation consultation.

The Council is explicit that reorganisation may affect this contract during its life, including a novation of the legal entity you contract with, significant increases or decreases in the value and volume of services, and changes to scope. Providers who show they can adapt, with a contract-management approach that expects change rather than assuming a fixed baseline, will read as safer partners. Building that flexibility into your mobilisation and contract-management answers is not padding, it is directly responsive to a risk the Council has named.

Key dates and how to apply

The route in is the In-Tend supplier portal. Register or log in at the Cambridgeshire County Council company portal, search for the procurement named "25076 Homecare Framework", express interest to access the documents, opt in to view the PSQ, complete the questionnaire, add the mandatory documents, and submit your return before the deadline.

The dates that matter: the enquiry deadline is 7 August 2026 at 12:00pm, so any clarification questions must go in by then. The deadline for requests to participate, meaning your completed PSQ, is 19 August 2026 at 12:00pm. The Council estimates award on 15 February 2027, with the framework commencing 1 November 2027. If you intend to bid, the practical order is simple: confirm eligibility against the PSQ this week, submit clarification questions before 7 August, and finalise the PSQ well before the 19 August cut-off. For live opportunities beyond this one, our tenders page tracks current UK care frameworks.

Frequently asked questions

When is the deadline for the Cambridgeshire Homecare Framework? The Procurement Specific Questionnaire is due by 19 August 2026 at 12:00pm, with an enquiry deadline of 7 August 2026. Only bidders shortlisted at PSQ stage are invited to submit a priced tender. Award is estimated for 15 February 2027, and the framework commences on 1 November 2027.

How is the framework scored? Award is on Price Per Quality Point. Quality is scored out of 100, then price is divided by the quality score and multiplied by 100. Bidders are ranked from lowest PPQP upward and allocated to their preferred zones until each zone's places are full, up to four zones per provider.

How many lots can we bid for and win? You can bid for up to 8 of the 17 lots and be awarded a maximum of 4. Lots 1 to 15 are geographic zones with a capped number of providers each, from 4 in East Fenland to 9 in the largest zones. Lot 16a is live-in care and Lot 16b is night-time care, both countywide.

Do we need CQC registration to bid? Homecare involving personal care is a CQC-regulated activity, so providers must hold the correct registration to deliver it. Cambridgeshire has signalled it expects a rating of Good or better and registration aligned to the client groups in scope. Confirm the exact minimum rating in the PSQ, because it is a pass or fail gate.

Is this a framework or a DPS? It is a multi-provider framework, not a dynamic purchasing system, although the Council can add providers later where a zone needs more capacity. The difference between the routes is explained in framework vs DPS vs spot contract.

How much should we charge? There is no published ceiling in the notice, so price to deliver rather than to undercut. Benchmark against the Homecare Association minimum price for homecare, which is £32.14 an hour for 2025 to 2026 in England, and make sure your rate funds travel time, supervision, training and on-call in the specific zones you target. Our guide on how to price a domiciliary care tender walks through the model.

Can new or smaller providers win a place? Yes. The Council names SMEs and voluntary, community and social enterprises as particularly suitable, and zone caps can favour committed local providers over national ones. A focused bid on winnable zones beats a thin bid spread across the county.

How will local government reorganisation affect the contract? Cambridgeshire has flagged that reorganisation may change the contracting entity, the volume of services and the scope during the contract term. It will not stop the framework, but providers should expect change and show they can adapt through mobilisation and contract management.

Bidding for a place on the Cambridgeshire Homecare Framework?

TenderLab helps UK care providers win council and NHS contracts, with a 92% win rate across 200-plus submissions. We only write health and social care bids, and most of our writers ran the services they now write about. Book a free consultation and we will tell you honestly whether this framework is winnable for you before you commit. TenderLab Ltd, Companies House 17184263.

Related reading

• Where to find domiciliary care tenders in the UK
• How to price a domiciliary care tender
• How to write method statements that win care contracts
• How to get on a care framework: frameworks, DPS and approved provider lists explained
• London Borough of Bromley Domiciliary Care Framework 2026-2030 analysis
• Newcastle City Council Home Care Services Framework 2026-2034 analysis
• Domiciliary care bid writing and framework support
• Live UK care tender opportunities

Further reading

• Find a Tender notice 066926-2026
• Cambridgeshire's new localised homecare approach (Council news)
• Procurement Act 2023
• Care Act 2014
• CQC Single Assessment Framework
• Homecare Association minimum price for homecare
• Local government reorganisation in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (GOV.UK)