Case Study

MYRTLE CARE PROVIDERS LIMITED NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Domiciliary Care AQP

Tender Overview

On 9 March 2026, Myrtle Care Providers Limited received confirmation from NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board that their application to the Domiciliary Care Any Qualified Provider procurement had been approved. AssuredBID handled the application from beginning to end.

The HWE Domiciliary Care AQP sits under the Provider Selection Regime — the legislation that now governs how NHS bodies in England commission health and care services. The AQP model works differently from a standard tender. Rather than putting providers in competition with one another, the ICB publishes a set of requirements and approves every provider that satisfies them. Those providers then join a pool that commissioners and service users draw from when arranging care packages.

The consequence of this model is straightforward: the written application is the only basis on which a decision gets made. There is no scoring system, no weighting, and no opportunity to recover ground if a section falls below the required level. A provider either clears every requirement or they do not make it onto the AQP. That is the context in which Myrtle Care Providers came to us for support.

Their contract was issued following the statutory standstill period, and they opened for NHS-commissioned referrals on 1 April 2026.

The Brief

Client	Myrtle Care Providers Limited
Commissioner	NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board
Tender	NHS HWE Domiciliary Care Any Qualified Provider (AQP) 2025 Procurement
Procurement Route	Any Qualified Provider under the Provider Selection Regime
Contract Start	1 April 2026
Result	Successful — Contract Awarded 9 March 2026

Myrtle Care Providers Limited is a domiciliary care business supporting adults to live independently in their own homes. They came to AssuredBID with a specific goal — to get onto the HWE AQP and begin receiving referrals from NHS commissioners in Hertfordshire and West Essex.

The application itself spanned several distinct areas. The ICB required evidence of sound financial standing, valid insurance cover, an active CQC registration, functioning safeguarding and data protection arrangements, and a staffing model capable of delivering care to NHS standards within the region. Each of those areas was evaluated on its own terms. A thorough response in one section did not reduce the risk of a shortfall in another.

Key Challenges

Challenge	Detail
The Provider Selection Regime is still new ground for many providers	The PSR only came into force in January 2024, and a significant number of care providers have not yet had reason to engage with it directly. The competitive process route used for this AQP carries procedural obligations that are easy to get wrong if you are not familiar with them — particularly around how the standstill period works and what needs to happen between notification and contract issue. Myrtle Care needed to get through the process correctly, not just produce strong written content.
NHS commissioners read applications through a particular lens	There is a real difference between a provider that delivers good care and a provider that can demonstrate it on paper in terms an NHS commissioner finds convincing. The HWE ICB was looking for specific things — particular references to regulatory frameworks, particular ways of describing quality oversight, particular evidence around how staff are managed and how service users are protected. Getting the content right technically was only part of the task. Getting the tone and framing right for the audience was equally important.
The document pack had to be spotless	CarePulse, the eProcurement portal used for this AQP, required a full set of supporting documents to be uploaded alongside the written submission. Every policy, certificate, and registration record had to be in date, correctly formatted, and clearly tied to the section it was there to support. A single missing or out-of-date document is treated the same as a blank answer — it is a failure to satisfy the requirement, and there is no chance to resubmit once the portal closes.

Our Approach

AssuredBID took on the full scope of the application. That meant assessing Myrtle Care’s existing documentation, producing all the written content, coordinating the supporting evidence pack, and managing the submission.

Approach	Detail
Documentation audit before anything else	The first thing we did was sit down with everything Myrtle Care had — their policies, their CQC record, their financial and insurance paperwork, their staffing and training documentation. Rather than starting to write and discovering problems mid-way through, we wanted a clear picture upfront of what was usable, what needed refreshing, and what had to be produced from scratch. That groundwork shaped how we planned the rest of the process.
Content that reflected Myrtle Care specifically	The written responses were built around how Myrtle Care actually runs — not what a generic domiciliary care provider might say. Their quality oversight arrangements, the way they bring staff into the organisation, the way they structure supervision and training, the way they would handle referrals and care coordination within HWE — all of it was described in their own terms, with their own evidence behind it. That specificity is what separates an application that reads as credible from one that reads as boilerplate.
Line-by-line review before submission	Once the application was complete, we went through it section by section against the published requirements. Every written answer was checked against the criteria it was responding to. Every document in the evidence pack was checked against the specification requirement it was there to satisfy. Anything that was not exactly right was corrected before the portal submission.

Results

NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex notified Myrtle Care Providers Limited of their successful application on 9 March 2026. The eight-working-day standstill period concluded without issue, and the contract proceeded to signature. Myrtle Care began delivering services on 1 April 2026.

Application	Result
NHS HWE Domiciliary Care AQP 2025 Procurement	✅ SUCCESSFUL

What This Means for Myrtle Care Providers Limited

Being on the HWE AQP puts Myrtle Care in front of commissioners across one of England’s larger integrated care board areas. Hertfordshire and West Essex together cover a substantial geography with a population in excess of a million people. As an approved provider, Myrtle Care will be visible to commissioners arranging NHS-funded domiciliary care packages across that footprint.

There is also a longer-term dimension to this. NHS approval is not a piece of paper that sits in a drawer. It is a documented, verifiable signal to any future commissioner that Myrtle Care’s organisation has been examined — its finances, its governance, its staff management, its delivery model — and found to be fit for NHS contracting. That signal is worth something every time they put their name forward for a contract or framework in the future.

From April 2026, Myrtle Care is doing the work that builds on that foundation. Every care package delivered to a good standard, every commissioner who sees them operate reliably, and every quality review they come through well adds to a track record that positions them for growth within NHS commissioning over the years ahead.

Working with AssuredBID

Care providers often lose contracts not because their services are poor, but because their applications do not do justice to what they actually deliver. NHS and local authority commissioners make decisions on paper. If the written submission does not hit the mark, the quality of your frontline care never gets considered.

AssuredBID is a specialist bid writing consultancy working exclusively in health and social care. Our team has helped care providers across England get onto NHS frameworks, local authority contracts, AQP lists, and dynamic purchasing systems — covering domiciliary care, supported living, residential services, mental health provision, and more.

We handle the full process. We know the procurement rules, we know what evaluators are looking for, and we know how to put a care provider’s real delivery experience across in writing that gets results.

If there is a tender you are preparing for, a framework closing soon, or a contract you have been meaning to go after, now is the time to act. Get in touch with the AssuredBID team and let us tell you what it takes to put in an application that wins.

Visit www.assuredbid.co.uk or call us to speak to a bid writer directly.

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