Bridgend Supported Living Tender 2026: 7 Lots, £98.7m

Bridgend County Borough Council is recommissioning its entire General Supported Living provision as 7 separate locality contracts worth an estimated £98.7m, with tenders due by 30 October 2026 and services starting on 31 March 2027. The award model is deliberately anti-monopoly: providers may bid for as many lots as they wish but no provider can be awarded more than 2. That single rule, combined with an 80% technical weighting and the Welsh regulatory framework, decides how this tender should be approached.

Tender at a glance

• Authority: Bridgend County Borough Council (tenders@bridgend.gov.uk)
• Title: Provision of General Supported Living Services, reference B1026
• Notice: 086586-2026, procurement ID ocds-h6vhtk-06a87b, published 11 September 2026
• Value: £98.7m estimated across 7 lots, against a current annual cost of £10.17m
• Lots: 7 locality contracts, awarded as separate contracts, maximum 2 lots per provider
• Term: 4 years from 31 March 2027, ending 31 March 2031, with 2 extensions of up to 24 months each to a maximum of 31 March 2035
• Award criteria: Technical 80%, Commercial 20%
• Procedure: Open procedure, single stage, Light Touch Regime, Procurement Act 2023
• Clarification deadline: 23 October 2026 at 17:00
• Submission deadline: 30 October 2026 at 00:00
• Award decision expected: 18 January 2027
• Portal: etenderwales (JAGGAER), project_64093
• Submission languages: English and Welsh
• Scope: 34 housing units, 89 individuals, 8,979 hours of support per week
• Suitable for: small and medium-sized enterprises, and voluntary, community and social enterprises

Always work from the official notice and the tender pack rather than a summary. Lot data changes between tender and contract start.

Cohort, funding and the Welsh regulatory position

This is a Welsh procurement and the regulatory framework is not the English one. Supported living care and support in Wales is delivered as a domiciliary support service, a regulated service under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, registered with and inspected by Care Inspectorate Wales rather than CQC. The provider appoints a Responsible Individual, and domiciliary care managers in Wales must register with Social Care Wales. Any response that refers to CQC registration, a CQC registered manager or an English inspection rating is visibly recycled, and in a market this small the evaluators will know it.

The funding structure is the second distinguishing feature. Each lot blends two streams: regulated care and support funded through Adult Social Care, and housing-related support funded through the Housing Support Grant. Every lot description splits the weekly hours accordingly, and the Council's own cabinet report notes that Housing Support Grant allocations may be subject to change. A response that treats the two streams as interchangeable, or that prices housing support at care rates, misreads the model.

The service model is the locality model the Council approved in 2020 and is now retaining. Each lot is a geographic cluster of schemes, and the stated purpose is to let providers respond flexibly to needs as they arise, use resources efficiently across a locality, and work collaboratively with the wider community. The service must run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in line with assessed needs.

The 7 lots

Lot sizes vary by an order of magnitude, and the differences are operational rather than presentational.

| Lot | Locality | Schemes | People | Voids | Weekly HS hours | Weekly ASC day hours | Total day hours | Estimated value | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | Pencoed | 2 | 5 | 0 | 66.5 | 131 | 197.5 | £2.9m | | 2 | Maesteg | 3 | 11 | 2 | 127.5 | 654.93 | 782.43 | £12.5m | | 3 | Tondu, Bettws and Aberkenfig | 8 | 21 | 1 | 280.5 | 1,549.16 | 1,829.66 | £28.6m | | 4 | Bridgend Town (West) | 6 | 13 | 0 | 280.5 | 653 | 933.5 | £14.3m | | 5 | Bridgend Town (East) | 6 | 14 | 4 | 204 | 782.86 | 986.86 | £15.0m | | 6 | Pyle and Kenfig Hill | 7 | 18 | 1 | 255 | 1,133.5 | 1,388.5 | £20.1m | | 7 | Porthcawl | 2 | 8 | 0 | 178.5 | 224.03 | 402.53 | £5.5m |

Night cover differs materially by lot and drives the cost model more than the day hours do:

• Lot 1: 1 scheme with 7 sleep-in nights, 1 scheme with emergency cover only
• Lot 2: all 3 schemes covered, 7 waking or sleeping nights
• Lot 3: 6 schemes on 7 sleep-in nights including 1 with 2 staff, plus 4 schemes on 7 waking nights
• Lot 4: 6 schemes on 7 sleep-in nights, plus 1 scheme on 7 waking nights
• Lot 5: 5 schemes on 7 shared sleep-in nights, including 1 on 7 waking nights
• Lot 6: 5 schemes with 1 staff member on 7 shared sleep-ins, plus 2 schemes with 2 staff on 7 nights including 2 waking
• Lot 7: both schemes on 7 shared sleep-in nights

Outreach hours sit outside the scheme-based support and vary sharply. Lot 4 carries 100 outreach hours for 2 people, Lot 6 carries 63 hours for 6 people, and Lot 5 carries 5 hours for 1 person. Outreach is the element most likely to be under-costed, because it carries travel time between addresses that scheme-based support does not.

Where lot selection decides the bid

The 2 lot cap changes the arithmetic. Bidding for everything and hoping is not a strategy here, because the Council is explicitly seeking a mixed market and will not award a provider more than 2 areas. The practical questions are which 2 lots a provider could genuinely mobilise and sustain, and whether the combination is geographically coherent.

Lot 3 alone is £28.6m across 8 schemes and 21 people, with the heaviest night cover in the procurement. It is a different operational proposition from Lot 1 at £2.9m across 2 schemes and 5 people. A provider with no existing Bridgend footprint that bids for Lot 3 and Lot 6 is proposing to stand up roughly 3,200 weekly day hours and complex night rotas across two separate localities from a standing start, against a fixed 31 March 2027 start date.

Adjacency matters for the locality model to work as described. Bridgend Town West and Bridgend Town East are contiguous. Pencoed and Porthcawl are not near each other. A pairing that lets staff, relief cover and management oversight flow between schemes is easier to evidence than one that does not, and the specification's own language about using resources efficiently across a locality invites that argument.

Voids are the third selection factor. Lot 5 carries 4 current voids against 14 people and Lot 2 carries 2 against 11. Voids cut income while fixed costs, particularly night cover, continue. They also create an opportunity, because a provider that can evidence how it works with the Council and housing partners to fill voids safely is answering a live problem rather than a theoretical one.

Key scoring battlegrounds

With technical at 80%, the quality response decides this. The Council's commissioning intentions point at five areas.

Service model and the locality approach. The Council has kept the locality model deliberately, so a response that simply describes good supported living will underperform one that shows how a locality is run as a locality: shared relief pools, cross-scheme cover, travel planning between schemes in the lot, management presence across sites, and how outreach is scheduled alongside scheme-based rotas.

Outcomes and independence. Supported living is commissioned to build independence, and hours in this contract are capped following outcomes reviews with periodic review where needs change significantly. That creates a genuine tension a strong bid should address directly: the provider is expected to support people towards greater independence, which can reduce the hours it is paid for. Explaining how that is managed honestly, with named review mechanisms and how reductions are evidenced, is more persuasive than avoiding it.

Workforce stability. The Council requires Real Living Wage provisions and annual inflationary uplifts. Workforce answers should therefore go beyond pay to what pay buys: retention data, sleep-in and waking night terms, progression through the Social Care Wales qualification framework, and how continuity is protected for people who have lived in the same scheme for years. Continuity carries particular weight in supported living, where the same small staff team supports the same people daily.

Integration and partnership. The dual funding model means housing providers, the Council's Adult Social Care teams and Housing Support Grant commissioners are all counterparties. Named relationships, information-sharing routes and escalation arrangements score better than assertions of partnership working.

Social value. The Council has flagged social value in its evaluation. Under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, Welsh public bodies work to 7 well-being goals including a prosperous Wales, a more equal Wales and a Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language. Social value commitments that map to those goals and to Bridgend specifically will read better than a generic national offer. Deliverable commitments beat ambitious ones, particularly where operational staff time is being promised.

Welsh language is a scored capability, not a formality

Submissions are accepted in English and Welsh. More importantly, the service is delivered under More than just words, the Welsh Government strategic framework for Welsh language services in health and social care, which requires the Active Offer: a service provided in Welsh without someone having to ask for it.

For supported living this is concrete rather than abstract. It affects recruitment and rota planning so that Welsh speakers are supported by Welsh-speaking staff, bilingual care records and assessments, bilingual information for the people supported and their families, and leadership commitment rather than a translation budget. Care Inspectorate Wales assesses the Active Offer at registration and inspection. A provider that treats Welsh language as a compliance line rather than a staffing and care planning question is conceding marks in a procurement where language capability is part of the service.

Common pitfalls in this procurement

• Regulator contamination. Referring to CQC, a CQC registered manager or an English inspection rating. The regulator is Care Inspectorate Wales and the manager registers with Social Care Wales.
• Treating the two funding streams as one. Housing Support Grant hours and Adult Social Care hours are distinct in every lot description and should be distinct in the response and the price.
• Under-costing night cover. Sleep-in, waking night and 2-staff night arrangements differ by lot. A single blended night rate across a bid for 2 different lots will not survive scrutiny.
• Ignoring outreach travel. Outreach reaches individuals in dispersed addresses. Lot 4's 100 hours for 2 people is a different travel profile from Lot 6's 63 hours across 6 people.
• Over-bidding. Submitting for 5 or 6 lots when only 2 can be awarded spreads bid quality thin and signals that the provider has not read the award rules.
• Generic locality claims. Asserting local knowledge without naming the communities, transport constraints and partners in the specific lot.
• Missing the clarification window. Clarifications close on 23 October 2026, 7 days before submission. Questions about void handling, Housing Support Grant assumptions and the outcomes review mechanism should go in early.
• Commitments the price cannot fund. With commercial at 20%, quality commitments still have to be affordable inside the rate. Check the pricing model against every promise before submission.

What the market position tells you

The Council's cabinet report is unusually informative about competition. Third sector and not-for-profit organisations hold approximately 80% of current market share, with the Council delivering 20% internally, and the internal provision is not in scope for this tender. Pre-market engagement in June 2026 drew 27 representatives from 17 providers.

Two conclusions follow. First, there is real competition, and incumbents with years of relationships in specific schemes will be defending them. Second, a strong third sector presence sets the tone of the market: co-production, community connection and mission-led delivery are the register the Council is used to reading, and the notice's explicit suitability for voluntary, community and social enterprises confirms it. A commercially framed response that leads on scale and efficiency will read as out of step.

Incumbency is also not decisive. TenderLab has repeatedly taken providers into supported living frameworks without a prior footprint in the authority, including Bedford Borough Council's Supported Living Framework, where a client was 1 of 44 successful applicants from 154 and secured all 3 lots, and Central Bedfordshire Council's Supported Living direct contract. What closes the gap is evidence density, not history in the borough.

Mobilisation and contract management

The gap between the expected award decision on 18 January 2027 and the 31 March 2027 start is roughly 10 weeks. That is a compressed window for a service running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Within it a successful provider will need to complete TUPE consultation with transferring staff, confirm Care Inspectorate Wales registration or variation for the relevant service and area, appoint and register the manager with Social Care Wales, build rotas that cover every scheme's specific night arrangement from day one, establish relationships with the housing providers for each scheme, meet the people being supported and their families before the transfer, configure recording systems, and baseline the outcome measures the Council will monitor against.

Registration lead times and Real Living Wage-compliant recruitment are the two constraints most likely to bite, and both need to be in the mobilisation plan with named owners and dates rather than described as priorities. Because supported living transfers involve people in their own homes, the mobilisation narrative should lead with continuity for those individuals, not with the provider's project management maturity.

After go-live the commitments become the baseline. The hours cap and outcomes review mechanism means the Council will be monitoring whether support levels move as outcomes improve, and the operational management arrangements promised in the bid are exactly what gets tested. That is why the registered manager equivalent should stress-test delivery commitments before submission rather than after award.

Is this tender worth bidding?

It suits a provider that can answer yes to most of the following. Existing supported living delivery for adults with assessed care and support needs. Capability or a credible route to registration as a domiciliary support service with Care Inspectorate Wales. Welsh language capacity or a realistic plan to build it. A workforce model that funds Real Living Wage plus sleep-in and waking night cover at the rates offered. Financial standing to carry voids. And the management capacity to mobilise in 10 weeks.

It does not suit a provider looking for a first step into regulated care, one with no Welsh operating position and no plan to build one, or one whose model depends on winning enough volume to spread overheads, because the 2 lot cap removes that option.

The conditions of participation are assessed on a pass/fail basis for both legal and financial capacity and technical and professional ability, set out in the Invitation to Tender and the Procurement Specific Questionnaire. Those should be checked before any drafting starts, because a pass/fail failure cannot be recovered by a strong quality response.

Next step

Send the tender pack and we will start with fit: the participation conditions, which 2 lots are realistic, the evidence you hold against the technical criteria, the mobilisation exposure and whether the commercial position works at the hours and night cover in those lots. Ask us to qualify this tender, or browse other live care tenders.

Dates, lot data, conditions and submission instructions on the official record remain authoritative and should be checked directly in etenderwales before you rely on anything here.