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Community Right to Challenge: Step 4 - Submitting an expression of interest

Published: 20 May 2020
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All relevant authorities will be required to make public their procedures for inviting and considering expressions of interest under the Right to Challenge.

You will need to find out from your authority what their processes are.

They will include:

  • When you can submit an expression of interest: Authorities can either have an open process, or they can specify particular periods when they will receive expressions of interest.
  • What information they need to accompany an expression of interest: The information required by law is specified in the section below. An authority can ask for more information than this but you are NOT obliged to provide it, and the authority CANNOT reject your expression of interest simply because you do not provide information outside of the legal requirements. You may decide however that providing this extra information will help you to make your case more clearly.

Set information included in any expression of interest

Government regulations specify the information which needs to form part of any expression of interest.

  1. Information about your financial resources (assets, cash reserves, investment available to you) and the same information about the financial resources of any and all partners or subcontractors you plan to use and have named in the submission.
  2. Information about your organisational capabilities to deliver the service in question (staffing, skills, experience, track record, quality systems, policies and procedures) and the same information about the capabilities of any and all partners or sub-contractors. If you do not have all of these capabilities fully in place at the time of submission of expression of interest this should not cause your expression of interest to be rejected PROVIDED THAT you can demonstrate to the authority’s satisfaction a plan to put any missing components in place by the time of a procurement exercise.
  3. Information which specifies clearly what the service in question is, including the geographical area to which your expression of interest relates.
  4. Information about the outcomes which you would achieve if you (or your consortium) were providing the service in question. This information relates both to: a) How your proposals would contribute to social, economic or environmental well being of the relevant authority’s area. b) How your proposals would meet the identified needs of users of the service And ONLY IF you are employees of the relevant authority and looking to “spin-out”
  5. Details of how you propose to engage with other employees of the authority who would be affected by your proposals. There is no fixed guidance from Government on what the form of this engagement should be.

Smaller service example – running the local outdoor market

The group bidding to take on the running of its local market finds out from the council’s website how the council deals with the Community Right to Challenge. They download the Expression of Interest form from the website and fill it in. Their argument is simple and focuses on three elements:

  • they can save the council some money
  • will increase the usage of the market
  • they project that they will generate some small surpluses after the first year which they would put into other local improvement projects in the town.

They submit their expression of interest and wait for the council’s response at Step 5.

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