Decision details

RESOLVED:

1. That Cabinet approves the development of Extra Care Housing on the former Bentley Day Centre site owned by the Council set out in this paper.

2. That Cabinet approves external delivery of Extra Care Housing at the former Bentley Day Centre through a tender for a strategic development and housing management partner(s) as the preferred option. This site will be tendered with four further sites that have previously been approved for Extra Care Housing by Cabinet.

3. That Cabinet grants delegated authority for contract award to the following officers:

a.    Deputy Chief Executive, Executive Director for Resources and Section 151 Officer in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Resources

b.    Executive Director for Adult Social Care in consultation with Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care

4. That Cabinet notes that a separate procurement process will be conducted to identify onsite support and care provision to avoid long-term support and care provision being tied into the development and housing management contract.

Reasons for Decisions:

The development of Extra Care Housing on the site set out in this paper will represent an important contribution towards the Council’s strategic objective to expand affordable Extra Care Housing provision by 2030.

Tendering for strategic development and housing management partner(s) to take forwards the development of Extra Care Housing on the former Bentley Day Centre is consistent with previous decisions made by Cabinet. In October 2019, July 2020 and October 2020 Cabinet agreed to identify a strategic partner(s) for the development and housing management of Extra Care Housing at the former Pond Meadow School, the former Brockhurst Care Home and the former Pinehurst Resource Centre, Salisbury Road and Lakeside sites through tendering processes.

There are multiple benefits for the Council from including the former Bentley Day Centre site in the tender with the existing four sites. These include:

• Accessing economies of scale from delivering Extra Care Housing across more settings, which is likely to lead to a more commercially favourable response for the Council.
• Preventing unnecessary delay to the delivery of Extra Care Housing at the former Bentley Day Centre because it would not be advised to tender a single site.
• Accelerating the delivery of the strategy by including the site in the upcoming tender.

This is consistent with our ASC vision for development of Extra Care Housing, which has been clearly communicated through market and stakeholder engagement.

The other option available is for the Council to directly deliver the Extra Care Housing scheme at the Bentley site.  This would involve the Council committing significant capital expenditure and be responsible for the ongoing housing management function of the Extra Care Housing setting.  This option is not recommended as it is anticipated significantly less financially beneficial to the Council and would mean one Extra Care Housing scheme would be developed by the Council in isolation while a strategic development and housing management partner was developing four other Extra Care Housing schemes (assuming the tender for these sites is successful, which we expect to be the case based on market engagement).  Financial modelling for both options is set out in the Part 2 paper.

(The decisions on this item can be called-in by the Adults and Health Select Committee)