North Northamptonshire Council (hereafter referred to as the "Council") is obliged to have inspection and testing facilities in place for all licensed hackney carriage and private hire vehicles.

The Council is currently working to enable publication of this opportunity around the end of February 2022, for this service to be provided by several suitably qualified and experienced Suppliers, with suitable facilities within each of the four (4) geographic areas which make up North Northamptonshire (those being Corby, Kettering, East Northamptonshire, and Wellingborough), for a contract period of up to five (5) years, from August 2022.

It is a requirement that all successful Suppliers (The organisation who wins the Contract, following evaluation of all bids received by the Council) must be equipped and approved to carry out Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (hereafter referred to as "DVSA") (MOT (UK term for vehicle inspection and roadworthiness tests; derived from the Ministry of Transport test car inspection)) tests and remain so throughout the period of the contract.

There are currently over 600 vehicles licensed by the Council, and each vehicle will require an MOT test and inspection against licensing conditions at least once every six (6) months.

Licensed vehicles include a wide range of different vehicle and manufacturer types, but all must be manufactured or adapted to have fewer than nine (9) passenger seats (maximum eight (8) passenger seats).

The contract arrangement will be structed to allow drivers and/or vehicle owners to pre-book their vehicle in for test and inspection with their chosen successful Supplier directly and pay the successful Supplier directly for the service provided.

It is anticipated that the service will be provided for a fixed fee, with annual incremental rises over the contract period.

Successful Suppliers must report all results on a prescribed form to the Council within a pre-defined timescale, to be confirmed in the Council's Specification for this requirement.

As such, all Successful Suppliers must be proficient in use of basic software, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook (or similar), and retain suitable Information Technology access for communications with the Council, during the contract period.

To satisfy the requirements of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, for procurement at this value, the Council will utilise an electronic tendering tool to manage this procurement process, where full details of this opportunity will be published.

Any potential Supplier interested in this opportunity may register on the Council's e-Procurement portal in advance of the opportunity being published, by visiting https://in-tendhost.co.uk/nnc.

Potential Suppliers must note that completion of the tender documents will require access to the internet, word processing software (e.g., Microsoft Word); and/or spreadsheet software (e.g., Microsoft Excel).