Case Study

CHOSEN HEALTHCARE LIMITED Derbyshire County Council — Children with Disabilities Short Breaks and Respite Framework

Tender Overview

In March 2026, Derbyshire County Council concluded its evaluation of the CCS079 Children with Disabilities Short Breaks and Respite Framework and wrote to Chosen Healthcare Limited with the result. Chosen Healthcare had applied for three lots: Lot A covering Community Based Befriending and Mentoring, Lot C covering Specialist Group Activities, and Lot D covering Home Care Services. The letter from the County’s Senior Procurement Officer confirmed that across all three, Chosen Healthcare had submitted the most advantageous tender.

AssuredBID wrote the technical submission.

This was a fully competitive scored procurement under the Procurement Act 2023. Every organisation that submitted a bid was assessed against identical criteria and the highest-scoring provider on each lot took the contract. The evaluation split quality and technical responses at 75%, price at 20%, and social value at 5%. Chosen Healthcare’s final scores were 84.796% on Lot A, 83.941% on Lot C, and 88.652% on Lot D.

Chosen Healthcare provides care and support to children and young people with disabilities. Their objective in bidding for this framework was to secure contracted positions across multiple short break service types in Derbyshire, establishing themselves as a recognised and commissioned provider in the county across different areas of children’s disability provision.

Challenges Faced

The structure of this tender made it significantly more demanding than a single-lot submission. The quality assessment on each lot was built around three questions. Two of them, safeguarding and good quality services, applied identically across all three lots and together accounted for 50% of the quality score on each. The third question was specific to the service area of that particular lot and carried the remaining 50% of the quality weighting.

That structure meant the submission had to work on two levels at once. The cross-lot questions needed responses strong enough to score the maximum mark on three separate lots. The lot-specific questions needed to be written as standalone answers to three genuinely different service briefs, each one specific to what that service delivers and how it does so.

Derbyshire’s mark scheme awarded its highest grade only to responses that were comprehensive and unambiguous, demonstrated a thorough understanding of the requirement, and provided full detail on how the requirement would be met with no outstanding concerns. A score one level below that went to responses that addressed most of what was asked but left some areas needing clarification. The difference between those two levels on a question worth 25% of the quality score was the difference between a competitive bid and a mid-table one.

The procurement was also run under the Procurement Act 2023, which brought changes to award notice publication, standstill period rules, and contract finalisation processes that differed from the previous regime.

What We Did

The safeguarding and good quality services questions were treated as the foundation of the entire submission. With both applying to all three lots and together representing half the quality marks available on each, they were the highest-leverage responses in the document. We built them to be exhaustive: specific about how Chosen Healthcare’s safeguarding arrangements work, what systems are in place, how staff are trained, how concerns are identified and escalated, and how the organisation demonstrates ongoing compliance. The good quality services response addressed oversight structures, quality checking, complaint handling, and outcome monitoring with the same level of detail. Both came back with the top score of 4 on Lot A, Lot C, and Lot D.

The lot-specific questions were handled as separate tasks. Lot A required a response about community-based befriending and mentoring for children with disabilities: specifically, how the service helps young people build real relationships and have enjoyable experiences in their communities. Lot C asked about specialist group activities and how the provider creates safe, positive spaces for children with disabilities to participate. Lot D dealt with home care delivery, asking how care plans are shaped by the young person and family’s own voice, and what contingency arrangements exist for managing staff absences.

Each of these was written to address precisely what the question was asking, using evidence from Chosen Healthcare’s actual delivery model in each service area. No response borrowed language from another. The Lot D question on home care has nothing in common with the Lot A question on community befriending, and the answers reflected that.

Pricing across the three lots was approached with the scoring methodology in view. On Lot D, a price score of 19.277 out of 20 contributed to that lot’s highest overall total.

The Outcome

On 18 March 2026, Derbyshire County Council confirmed Chosen Healthcare Limited as the most advantageous tenderer on all three lots.

Lot	Service	Price Score	Quality Score	Social Value	Total
Lot A	Community Based Befriending and Mentoring	15.421%	65.625%	3.750%	84.796%
Lot C	Specialist Group Activities	14.566%	65.625%	3.750%	83.941%
Lot D	Home Care Services	19.277%	65.625%	3.750%	88.652%

Safeguarding: maximum score of 4 on every lot. Good quality services: maximum score of 4 on every lot. All pass/fail requirements met across the board.

Conclusion

Chosen Healthcare holds framework contracts across three children’s disability service areas in Derbyshire, each secured through direct competition. The safeguarding result stands out particularly. Three independent evaluation exercises, on three separate lots, each returned the same formal assessment: comprehensive, thorough, no concerns. That is a documented record of organisational standards in the area that children’s services commissioners examine most carefully, and it carries weight in every future tender Chosen Healthcare submits.

The social value responses and lot-specific quality questions scored 3 rather than 4. Evaluation feedback pointed to apprenticeships being absent from the social value responses and to gaps in the depth of evidence on specific elements of each lot-specific service model. Those are defined targets for the next submission.

If you are preparing for a children’s services tender or any health and social care procurement where the quality of your written responses determines the result, visit www.assuredbid.co.uk or contact AssuredBID directly to discuss what a high-scoring submission looks like for your organisation.

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CHOSEN HEALTHCARE LIMITED Derbyshire County Council — Children with Disabilities Short Breaks and Respite Framework

Tender Overview

Challenges Faced

What We Did

The Outcome

Conclusion

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