NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (AGCSU) on behalf of NHS Birmingham and Solihull ICB and NHS Black Country ICB (the Commissioners) wish to inform the market of a future procurement opportunity to deliver an orthodontic service in the Walsall and South Birmingham area.

Following the hand back of orthodontic activity, by four providers across five contracts, in Walsall and Birmingham, Commissioners are seeking to replace the lost activity.

The new services will be delivered under an NHS England Personal Dental Service (PDS) Agreement.

There is a requirement that the service is led by a Specialist in Orthodontics.

The Commissioners, would like to invite suitably qualified and experienced providers to participate in a questionnaire that will help to: • Gain market views on the viability of procuring Orthodontic services across Birmingham and Walsall, • Determine a structure of the future procurement, • Determine length of future contracts.

Your detailed feedback, knowledge, ideas, positives and negatives in response to the questions listed in the published market assessment questionnaire are invaluable to us and will help inform the orthodontic services commissioned and will be considered together with information from patients and other key stakeholders.

The Commissioners are truly grateful for your help and support.

Over the past 2 years an interim solution has been in place to ensure those children who were due to commence orthodontic treatment in 22/23 and 23/24 were able to commence their treatment within the financial year.

Due to the short-term nature of the interim arrangement's, Commissioners are seeking to procure a long term and sustainable solution.

Commissioners wish to replace the lost activity by procuring new practices to provide a comprehensive orthodontic assessment and treatment service as per the final regional service specification, which will be published as part of the tender.

For clarity there is no additional investment in these two new contracts.

The annual contract values are in line with the baseline funding.

The procurement process cannot begin until the governance process has completed; following this market assessment and the patient and public engagement exercise.

Commissioners will consider the outputs of both exercises in finalising the contract and service specification.

The new practices may inherit a small waiting list of children waiting to commence orthodontic treatment; however the size will be determined by the time it takes to procure an mobilise the new practices.

A draft Orthodontics service specification has also been uploaded onto the portal for review and comments.

Guidance regarding how to view the draft service specification and complete this questionnaire has been provided in the attachment.

Please note, the deadline to respond to the questionnaire is 10am on Friday 8th December 2023.