North Northamptonshire Supported Living Framework: What to Submit Before 12 Noon on 28 October 2026

North Northamptonshire Supported Living Framework: What to Submit Before 12 Noon on 28 October 2026

North Northamptonshire Council's supported living framework closes at 12:00 on 28 October 2026, according to Find a Tender notice 092554-2026 published 6 October 2026. You have six days to register on the ProContract portal, answer person-centred care quality questions, evidence safeguarding arrangements and workforce models, and submit pricing for a £303 million framework running to 31 March 2032.

This is an open framework, which means it will re-open at intervals after the 28 October deadline. If you miss this window, you will not be locked out permanently, but you will sit outside while competitors begin securing call-offs and building relationships with the council and Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), who are running the scheme in partnership. The question for most providers reading this week (week starting 2026-10-22) is whether six days is enough, or whether to wait for the next entry point and use the time to prepare properly.

What the notice tells you

The framework covers supported living services for working age adults across the North Northamptonshire unitary authority area. The estimated value over the full term is £303 million excluding VAT. The scheme is structured as an open framework, which allows new providers to join after the initial award, but does not specify re-opening frequency or whether later entrants will be disadvantaged in position or visibility.

The ProContract (Due North) portal is hosting the tender. The notice was published on 6 October 2026, giving a 22-day window from publication to deadline. Providers must register on the portal, complete all selection questionnaires, answer quality questions, and submit pricing schedules by 12:00 on 28 October 2026. All dates and figures here come from the Find a Tender notice. Confirm every detail on the portal before committing resource.

What evaluators will score

Supported living evaluators at council and ICB level score three areas consistently: person-centred outcomes, safeguarding and workforce resilience, and quality of life evidence. The North Northamptonshire scheme does not publish method statements or weightings in the Find a Tender notice itself, so you will need to download the full ITT from ProContract to see question structure, but these three pillars appear in every supported living framework tender we have worked on in the past three years.

Person-centred outcomes means the evaluator is looking for how you adapt support around individual choice, not how you fit people into a house model. A strong answer describes your assessment process, how you record preferences that may change over time (food, routines, social contact, risk appetite), and how frontline staff access and act on that information daily. Weak answers list policies. Strong answers show a support worker's diary entry or care note that demonstrates lived flexibility. The evaluator is often a commissioning manager who has seen providers talk about choice while running rigid shift patterns that suit the rota, not the resident.

Safeguarding and workforce resilience are usually separate questions but are read together. The evaluator knows that the best safeguarding policy in the world fails if you cannot retain staff who know the residents. They will score your training schedule, supervision frequency, and escalation process, but they will also look for retention rates, sickness absence, use of agency cover, and whether your wage model sits above or below the Real Living Wage. If you are scoring 70 out of 100 on safeguarding content but your workforce answer shows 40 per cent annual turnover and minimum-wage contracts, expect your overall quality score to drop. They read these answers as a pair.

Quality of life evidence is the third pillar. This is where you prove outcomes, not process. Evaluators want data: how many residents are in paid employment, how many are registered to vote, how many have attended a social or community event in the past month, how many have had a health check in the past year. If your organisation collects this, you will score well. If you describe your ambition to promote community inclusion but cannot evidence it numerically, you will not. This is the question where larger providers with established data systems pull ahead of smaller, high-quality providers who know their residents deeply but have never formalised the recording.

A 72-hour plan to submission

If you are committing to the 28 October deadline today (22 October 2026), you have six days. In practice, you need the submission ready by close of business on 27 October to allow time for portal upload, PDF conversion errors, and final checks. That gives you 72 working hours.

Hour zero to hour eight: register on ProContract, download every document, and read the evaluation model. Assign one person to own the portal and the submission file. Identify which questions require new content and which can be adapted from previous bids. If you have submitted to supported living tenders in the past 18 months, you will have 60 per cent of the content already. If this is your first framework bid, assume you are writing from scratch.

Hour eight to hour 32: draft all quality answers. Divide questions among your team, but ensure one person edits for tone and consistency. Evaluators notice when question five contradicts question two, or when the safeguarding answer promises quarterly supervision and the workforce answer describes six-monthly reviews. Use real examples: a case study, a rota excerpt, a recent audit outcome. Do not write in the abstract. Every claim needs a supporting sentence that shows how it happens in practice.

Hour 32 to hour 48: complete the pricing schedules. Supported living pricing is usually structured around hourly rates for different acuity bands, with separate rates for waking night, sleep-in, and specialist support such as positive behaviour or epilepsy care. You will also need to price management overheads, on-costs, and overhead recovery separately so the council can see your build-up. If your finance director is on leave or unavailable, this section will delay you more than the quality content. Start it early.

Hour 48 to hour 60: internal review. Someone senior who has not written the content should read it as if they are the evaluator. Check that every answer is complete, that you have not left template text or placeholders, and that the evidence you cite is current. A CQC rating from 2024 is historical context, but if your most recent inspection was in early 2026, that is what the evaluator expects to see referenced.

Hour 60 to hour 72: upload to the portal, convert documents to PDF if required, and submit. Allow three hours for this. Portals time out, file sizes exceed limits, and formatting breaks when you move from Word to PDF. If you leave this until 11:00 on 28 October, you will miss the deadline.

The reality is that most providers reading this today cannot execute that plan. If you do not have up-to-date case studies, workforce data, or quality of life metrics already recorded, you will not produce them in 72 hours. If you are unsure whether your pricing model is competitive or whether your CQC rating will pass the selection threshold, six days is not enough time to make an informed decision. That is not a failure. That is commercial honesty. For help making the call or pulling together urgent bid writing resource if you do proceed, late-stage support exists, but it does not replace the underlying content you need to score well.

What to do if you miss the deadline

If you conclude that six days is not enough, confirm on the Find a Tender notice or by contacting the council directly when the framework will re-open. Open frameworks are required to re-open at regular intervals, but "regular" is not defined in law, and practice varies. Some open frameworks re-open quarterly. Others re-open annually or only when the authority decides it needs additional capacity.

While you wait, build the content you need for the next round. Collect quality of life data monthly. Record resident outcomes in a format you can report numerically. Review your workforce model and retention rates, and if they are weak, start fixing them now. A supported living framework bid is a diagnostic of your operational maturity. If you are not confident in your answers, the buyer will not be confident in your delivery.

Use the time to read the awarded providers' redacted submissions if the council makes them available under FOI, or to review similar frameworks that have recently closed. The quality questions in supported living tenders are highly consistent. If you prepare strong, evidence-led answers to the three pillars described above, you will be ready when the next entry point opens.

Frequently asked questions

Can I join the framework after 28 October 2026 if I miss this deadline?

Yes. The Find a Tender notice describes this as an open framework running to 31 March 2032, which means it will re-open for new applicants at intervals. The notice does not specify how often or on what terms later entrants will be added, so you should contact North Northamptonshire Council directly to ask when the next window will open and whether providers who join later will have equal access to call-off opportunities.

What happens if I submit at 12:01 instead of 12:00 on 28 October?

Your submission will be rejected. Public procurement deadlines in England are absolute. The portal will lock at 12:00, and anything submitted after that time is non-compliant. There is no discretion, no late acceptance, and no appeal unless you can prove the portal itself failed. If you are working to the final hour, assume the portal will have problems and finish early. For more on managing tender deadlines, the principle is always the same: aim to submit 24 hours before the published cut-off.

Do I need a CQC rating to be eligible for this framework?

The Find a Tender notice does not specify this in the summary, so you must check the full selection questionnaire on ProContract. Most supported living frameworks require providers to be CQC-registered and will exclude any provider currently rated Inadequate. A Good or Outstanding rating will typically score higher in quality evaluation than Requires Improvement, but the threshold for eligibility is usually registration and not being in special measures. If you are newly registered or awaiting your first inspection, clarify your status with the council before investing time in the submission.

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