Community services in West Lancashire are currently provided by HCRG Care Group. The community health services contract, along with an urgent care services contract, was originally awarded to Virgin Care in 2016 and went live in May 2017. Virgin Care was bought out by HCRG Care Group in 2022. Both contract lengths were for five years with an option to extend for two years. In 2022, NHS West Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group extended both contracts by two years to the end of April 2024.  

Since July 2022, the ICB has held responsibility for planning NHS services in Lancashire and South Cumbria and approved continuation of both contracts from May 2024 to the end of March 2026. This allowed more time to review the community services offer in West Lancashire, consider future arrangements, and carry out engagement with providers and patients and the public.   

The main themes which emerged from various patient and public engagement exercises were that people supported a move to more care in the community and providing care closer to home, but that care needs to be: 

• Easily accessible  
• More joined up and better co-ordinated  
• Person-centred  
• Timely   

People would also like to see better communication and availability of information as well as direct access to the person/team delivering the service and better use of technology.  

The ICB intends to undertake a separate procurement exercise of urgent care services in West Lancashire with a new contract also commencing from April 2026.   

The ICB’s vision is to have a high-quality, community-centred health and care system by 2035 focused on ‘well care’ rather than ‘sick care’ by prioritising prevention, wellbeing and early intervention. 

To help achieve this vision, the ICB is undertaking an extensive programme of work to transform community care. The ambition is to keep people safe and well at home, by bringing care closer to where they live and treating more people outside of a hospital setting where possible. 

The primary goal for community services transformation is to make sure everyone has equitable access to services which keep them healthier for longer and out of hospital where at all possible.    

There is a focus on three areas:    

Creating healthy communities: we want to connect people to other people in their local communities, as well as services available from local partners and groups, activities and events. We want people to take control of their health and wellbeing.    

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams: we want to bring together health and care teams and professionals, as well as the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector to improve care for neighbourhood populations. A team of teams, sharing information and resources to improve health and wellbeing by tackling health inequalities.    

Enhanced care in the community: we want to offer support which allows people to recover and increase their independence at home or as close to home as possible. This will bring together care teams to support people with physical care needs, crisis services, home-based and bed-based support. 

The ICB needs to  ensure that the future provider of adult community services in West Lancashire is the most capable of improving the quality and efficiency of services and adding value to patients’ lives, while delivering care in line with the ICB’s vision. 

Patients can still expect to have access to high quality community services throughout the procurement process and beyond, and the professionals who provide their care will not change as a result of this process starting. The ICB greatly values the skills, local knowledge and experience of community service staff and have listened to their views which will inform the future model of care.  

The ICB is keen to ensure the new model of care is both informed by and built upon this strong and committed workforce and will continue to liaise with the incumbent staff impacted by this process. In addition, it is important to note that all procurement exercises are subject to stringent NHS workforce regulation and employment laws. These provide existing staff with certain safeguards in respect of their employment. 

The full process in identifying the participants to support this procurement exercise is outlined below:

• 7 March 2025 to 23:59pm on Monday 31 March 2025: Expressions of interest are submitted by members of the public to the ICB.
• 1 April 2025 to 11 April 2025: Initial checks to be made by the ICB of those expressing an interest, including reviewing any previous correspondence by individuals or publicly available information.
• 14 April 2025 to 25 April 2025: All applications will be assessed by the ICB.
• Week commencing 28 April 2025: A final decision will then be made on the participant(s) selected. All applicants will be notified by email if they have been successful or not. Those who have been selected will be invited to attend training.

In order to protect the integrity and safety of selected evaluators, the ICB will at no point identify the participants taking part in this exercise. Individuals involved in the procurement are required to treat information (including but not restricted to bid documents, supplier evaluations, etc) with strict confidentiality, and not make any unauthorised disclosures of this information. Should confidentiality be breached, the individual who discloses information may be removed from the procurement exercise and the bid scoring process may need to be abandoned.

Any disclosed conflicts of interest will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Individuals will only be excluded from carrying out the role where the identified conflict is considered to be material and cannot be mitigated or be reasonably dealt with in another way. 

Conflict of interest refers to situations in which personal interests (which may include financial interests) may compromise, or have the appearance of, or potential for, compromising professional judgement and integrity and, in doing so, the best interests of the commissioners. 

Examples of conflicts of interest may include, but are not restricted to:

• If you are a current or previous employee of a company, or have a member of your family, your partner (married, civil partnership or not), your siblings, your children, or any close personal or professional relationships that are an employee of the current provider, HCRG Care Group, or a company that is seeking to provide the community services.
• If you, or a member of your family/friends (as set out above), has a financial interest in the current provider, HCRG Care Group, or a company that is seeking to provide the community services.
• If you, or a member of your family/friends (as set out above), has a financial relationship of any kind with the current provider, HCRG Care Group, or a company that is seeking to provide the community services.
• If you have been involved in any fundraising activities, either financially or by association, established to in any way support of the current provider, HCRG Care Group, or any provider that is seeking to provide the community services. 

This is a non-exhaustive list of examples and it is your responsibility to ensure that any and all actual, potential or perceived conflicts are disclosed prior to you being involved in the procurement. 

If you are unsure whether your current or previous relationship or involvement with an organisation that is seeking to provide the community services constitutes a conflict of interest, you should include this on the expression of interest form and this will be reviewed as part of the process.

If conflicts of interest arise at any time during the exercise then you must make this known to the organisers of the procurement process.