Manchester Foyer Tender 2026: Scoring Breakdown
Manchester City Council's Foyer tender for young people closes 24 August 2026. Read the 45% quality scoring breakdown from a 92% win-rate care bid team.
Image: A young person in supported accommodation, illustrating Manchester City Council's Foyer provision.
Manchester City Council Foyer tender 2026: how to score 5/5
Posted by the TenderLab Editorial Team on 6 August 2026. Last updated 6 August 2026. Written by evaluator-trained bid writers who specialise in UK health and social care.
Manchester City Council has opened its Foyer tender, a five-year contract to run supported accommodation for young people, and bids close at 11:00 on 24 August 2026. The Manchester Foyer tender is an open procedure and a single lot, worth £1.45m excluding VAT (£1.74m including VAT) across the full term. Quality is weighted at 45%, and that weighting, not price, is where this contract is won or lost.
This is not a care home and it is not a night shelter. It is supported accommodation on the Foyer model for 16 to 25 year olds who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or leaving care, combining safe housing with education and employment support and wellbeing. Practice is trauma-informed, with early move-on planning built in. The cohort spans two very different regulatory positions, and any response that blurs them will lose marks with an evaluator who knows the sector.
The essentials:
- £1.45m ex VAT (£1.74m inc VAT) over 5 years, close to £290,000 a year.
- Open procedure, single lot, one provider for the whole service.
- Quality 45%, Price 25%, Social Value 20%, Environment 10%.
- Bids close 11:00 on 24 August 2026. The contract runs 1 February 2027 to 31 January 2032.
Tender at a glance
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Commissioning authority: Manchester City Council
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Contract title: A Foyer Provision
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Service: Supported accommodation for young people aged 16 to 25 who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or leaving care, delivered on the Foyer model of housing, education and employment support, and wellbeing
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Contract value: £1.45m ex VAT (£1.74m inc VAT)
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Contract term: 5 years, 1 February 2027 to 31 January 2032
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Procedure: Open
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Lots: Single lot
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CPV code: 85311000, social work services with accommodation
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Region: Manchester (UKD33)
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Award criteria: Quality 45%, Price 25%, Social Value 20%, Environment 10%
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Submission deadline: 24 August 2026, 11:00
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Find a Tender reference: 071153-2026
You can read the contract notice in full on the Find a Tender service.
The Foyer model is housing plus opportunity, not accommodation alone
A Foyer is an integrated model. It pairs safe, time-limited accommodation with structured support that moves a young person into education, training or employment (ETE), and it treats the two as one job rather than two. The reasoning is simple. A young person cannot hold a college place or a job without somewhere stable to live, and stable housing means little if it leads nowhere.
The service is for 16 to 25 year olds who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or leaving care. In practice that is three overlapping groups arriving through different doors: young people presenting as homeless, young people the council is trying to keep from becoming homeless, and care leavers stepping down into their first independent home. The common thread is transition, and the Foyer exists to make that transition succeed rather than stall.
Expect the specification to ask for accommodation, keywork, and a live pathway plan for each resident covering housing, ETE, health and wellbeing, and move-on. The bid that wins describes how those strands connect for a named young person, not as separate workstreams that never meet.
The cohort splits by age, and so does the regulation
This is the single most important thing to get right. The regulatory position is not uniform across the cohort, and treating it as if it were is the fastest way to lose credibility with the panel.
Relevant looked-after 16 and 17 year olds placed in supported accommodation fall within the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023. A provider accommodating that group must be registered with Ofsted and is inspected against the supported accommodation quality standards. Your bid needs to show the registration is held or credibly in train before go-live, and that your quality assurance maps to those standards.
Care leavers and residents aged 18 and over are a different matter. They are not automatically Ofsted-regulated. Their support sits under leaving-care duties in the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the wider Children Act 1989, including personal advisers and pathway plans. Where homelessness is the trigger, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 applies, with its prevention and relief duties and the duty to refer.
One point that catches bidders out: this is not a Care Quality Commission service. Supported accommodation that does not provide personal care is not a CQC-regulated activity. Writing CQC language into this bid signals that you have not understood the model. The regulator that matters here is Ofsted, and only for the looked-after 16 and 17 year old element.
Quality carries 45%, so your method statements decide this contract
Do the arithmetic before you write. Quality is 45%, price 25%, social value 20% and environment 10%. Price is only a quarter of the score, so the cheapest compliant bid does not win. The method statements do, and social value plus environment together are worth 30%.
Based on comparable Foyer and supported accommodation specifications, expect the quality section to test four things. How you keep young people safe and deliver trauma-informed support. How you get young people into education, training or employment and keep them there. How you plan move-on from day one and prevent a return to homelessness. And how you recruit, train and supervise the staff who hold it all together.
Each of those is a place where a specific, named, operational answer scores and a general one does not. The panel is reading for mechanisms, roles, ratios and timelines, not adjectives.
What Manchester's evaluators will reward, and what they will mark down
Evaluators reward specificity. They reward a named safeguarding lead, a named local college partner, a stated keywork ratio, a described reflective practice session, and a move-on pathway with a timeline. They reward answers that quote the young person's experience back to the reader rather than describing a process in the abstract.
They mark down three things in particular. Generic care-provider boilerplate that could describe any service. Regulatory confusion, especially CQC language on an Ofsted and non-regulated service. And unproven claims, meaning anything asserted without a mechanism, a role or a measure behind it.
Our writers are evaluator-trained, and most began on the frontline of care and support before they wrote a bid. That perspective is why our specification-mirrored bid writing reads a Foyer spec the way the panel will read it back.
The mistakes that quietly lose marks on a Foyer bid
Five traps come up again and again on supported accommodation bids.
- Blurring the age split. One regulatory approach for the whole 16 to 25 cohort tells the evaluator you have not grasped that Ofsted registration bites only on the looked-after 16 and 17 year olds.
- Importing CQC language. Registered manager, fundamental standards and key lines of enquiry belong to a different type of service. They do not apply here, and their presence reads as a recycled bid.
- Separating housing from ETE. A housing answer and an education answer that never meet miss the point of the Foyer model, which is that the two only work when they work together.
- Trauma-informed as a label. Claiming trauma-informed and psychologically informed practice without describing reflective practice, supervision and the physical environment is an assertion, not evidence.
- Leaving the read too late. The strongest draft still gains marks from a structured check against the specification. Build in a pre-submission review well before 11:00 on 24 August 2026, not the night before.
A win-rate playbook for the Manchester Foyer tender
Six approaches move the score on a bid like this. Each needs a named mechanism behind it.
- Split your model by age and regulation. Describe two clear pathways: an Ofsted-registered offer for relevant looked-after 16 and 17 year olds under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, and a leaving-care and homelessness offer for 18 to 25 year olds. Then show the join between them.
- Make trauma-informed practice real. A psychologically informed environment (PIE) is more than a phrase. Evidence a psychological framework, reflective practice sessions for staff, practitioner supervision, and a physical environment designed to feel safe. That is what PIE means and what the panel looks for.
- Turn ETE into outcomes. Name your education and employment partners across Greater Manchester, from colleges and training providers to apprenticeship and employer routes, and describe how you track each young person's progress into and through education, training or employment.
- Plan move-on from day one. Show a tenancy-readiness pathway that starts at admission, floating support after move-on, and how you prevent a return to homelessness. This is where the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 prevention and relief duties meet your service in practice.
- Win social value locally. Social value is 20%. Commit to Greater Manchester spend, care leaver employment within your own service, peer mentoring and work placements, each with a measure and a named owner. Generic national pledges score poorly against a local buyer.
- Answer the environment question properly. Environment is 10% and it is scored, not decorative. Set out named actions on energy, travel, procurement and waste for the building and the service, with someone accountable, rather than a one-line policy statement.
We wrote the successful bid behind the Bedford supported living framework, which is the over-18 half of this model, and the Southend children's residential contract, which is the Ofsted-registered half. Few providers can prove they understand both sides of the age split this Foyer brings together.
Mobilisation runs from award to 1 February 2027
The contract starts on 1 February 2027, which leaves a defined mobilisation window between award and go-live. Manchester will expect a credible plan for it.
That plan covers Ofsted registration for the 16 and 17 year old element if it is not already held, recruitment and safe onboarding of keyworkers, any TUPE transfer from an incumbent, the physical readiness of the accommodation, and the referral and allocation route agreed with the council. It also covers the data and reporting you will hand back, and how you will stand the service up without a gap for young people already living there.
After go-live, expect a performance regime built around the outcomes that matter for this cohort: safety and safeguarding, engagement in education, training and employment, successful planned move-on, and prevention of a return to homelessness. Do not invent targets in your bid. Commit to the council's, and show the mechanism by which you will hit them.
Frequently asked questions
When does the Manchester City Council Foyer tender close?
Bids close at 11:00 on 24 August 2026. The contract is procured through the open procedure as a single lot, and the service runs for five years from 1 February 2027 to 31 January 2032. The Find a Tender reference for the notice is 071153-2026.
How much is the Manchester Foyer contract worth?
The contract is valued at £1.45m excluding VAT, or £1.74m including VAT, across the full five-year term. That works out at roughly £290,000 a year. It covers accommodation and support for young people aged 16 to 25 on the Foyer model.
Is a Foyer regulated by Ofsted or CQC?
It depends on the resident. Relevant looked-after 16 and 17 year olds fall under the Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, so the provider must be registered with Ofsted. Care leavers and over-18s are not automatically Ofsted-regulated, and a service without personal care is not CQC-regulated.
What are the award criteria for the Manchester Foyer tender?
The award is scored on quality at 45%, price at 25%, social value at 20% and environment at 10%. Quality is the largest single component, so the method statements, not the lowest price, decide the outcome. Social value and environment together carry a further 30%.
What is the Foyer model of supported accommodation?
The Foyer model combines safe, time-limited housing with structured education, training and employment support and wellbeing help for young people. It rests on the principle that stable accommodation and a route into work or study have to be delivered together for a transition to independence to hold.
Who can bid for the Manchester Foyer contract?
Because it uses the open procedure, any provider that meets the requirements set out in the tender documents can submit a bid by the deadline. It is a single lot for one provider to run the whole service, so any consortium or subcontracting arrangement should be set out clearly.
Speak to a care sector bid team before you write a word
Not sure where to start with the Manchester Foyer bid?
We write specification-mirrored method statements with named operational evidence, correct regulatory framing for every part of the cohort, and a pre-submission review built in before the 24 August deadline. TenderLab is a sector-exclusive UK health and social care bid-writing consultancy with a 92% win rate across 200+ submissions, and our writers are evaluator-trained. Companies House 17184263.
Book a free consultation on this tender to talk it through, whether or not we turn out to be the right fit for it.