Shropshire Council

Selection criteria for the appointment of a new organisation to manage library services in Church Stretton

  • Period: 21 August 2017 - 18 September 2017
  • Status: Closed
  • Audiences: Everyone
  • Topics: Commissioning, Leisure and culture, Big Conversation
  • Type: Public

We ("the council") recently consulted with residents of Church Stretton about their priorities for the provision of a library service. We received over 500 responses to the consultation. We have considered all the points raised within the consultation and used these to develop a draft set of criteria to be used in the selection of a new provider of library services within a formal tendering process.

Before we go out to procure a new organisation (“provider”) to manage library services in Church Stretton, we would welcome your comments on the draft selection criteria.  

Background

Work to appoint a new provider to manage and develop library services in Church Stretton commenced when the Council invited expressions of interest (under the “Community Right to Challenge” legislation) from local community groups. Two valid expressions of interest were received and the Council is now undertaking a procurement exercise to select a new organisation. You can view more details of the Community Right to Challenge process on our website

Whilst the decision over which organisation runs the library in the future is for the council to make, we want to make sure that we have taken into account the views of Church Stretton library users and non-users when we set out our selection criteria. These are included within the tender questions and the tender scoring scheme, and are informed by the library services service specification.

Summary of feedback from the recent consultation exercise

The feedback from the recent consultation showed the relative importance of a range of factors in the provision of a library service in Church Stretton as follows:

How important are the following:

 Very Important

%

Rank – Very Important

Quite Important

%

The library is accessible for all those wishing to use the facility

90.19%

1

8.87%

The library is located in a town centre location

84.34%

2

9.62%

The library offers a safe environment to all users

77.36%

3

18.87%

The library is operated by trained and experienced staff

62.26%

4

32.26%

The local community has the opportunity to get involved with how the library is managed and run

57.36%

5

34.15%

The library offers adequate space for the services it delivers

56.98%

6

39.43%

The library is operated in the most cost effective manner possible

44.91%

7

43.58%

The library offers a wide range of events and activities for all ages

42.08%

8

42.64%

The library should offer the widest possible opening times

38.87%

9

53.40%

The library considers extending the services it provides beyond the traditional library function based on local need

34.34%

10

44.53%

The library provides easily accessible parking

31.89%

11

43.40%

The library offers a range of volunteering opportunities

27.92%

12

47.74%

Fig 1. Consultation feedback June / July 2017

Proposed library services specification

The procurement exercise will be informed by a detailed ‘service specification’, which will set out what the new provider will be expected to do. The specification both includes elements that are common to other library services and that are specific to Church Stretton library service. The proposed service specification is attached at Appendix A.

Proposed tender questions

The draft tender questions attached to this page are intended to find out from tenderers how they will deliver library service in Church Stretton. They are designed to establish whether each tenderer can deliver a cost-effective, viable and sustainable library service, which is of a high quality and meets the requirements of both the Council and the local community. Questions are structured under two headings, cost and quality. We will ask each tendering organisation how much funding they require from Shropshire Council to run the library and what alternative funding they are able to secure from elsewhere to ensure that the library service is sustainable.

Alongside providing answers to the questions, tenderers will be asked to supply a copy of their 5-year Business Plan.

Proposed tender scoring scheme

The Council will evaluate the answers to the tender questions in accordance with a clear scoring scheme. Questions will be weighted according to how important they are considered to be to the future management and development of library services in Church Stretton.

Completed tenders will be evaluated on the answers provided to the tender questions and evaluated against the proposed criteria set out in the table attached to this page.

Please note that the tender which scores the highest overall will be the one which is able to demonstrate the best overall combination of cost, sustainability, model of delivery and other ’quality’ elements.

How to feedback

Having read the information provided, please complete our short online feedback form to provide your comments.

Documents

This 4 week consultation took place from the 21 August to the 18 September to seek views in relation to the proposed procurement details for a library service in Church Stretton and whether responses to previous community engagement exercises have been taken into account.

A total of 95 completed forms were submitted (42 online responses and 53 paper forms).

There were a further 6 responses which were comments only without the answers to the questions. These comments have been added in to the analysis, which you can view in the related documents section.

Documents

Data protection

Information collected in our surveys will only be used by us (Shropshire Council) to inform the immediate and future provision of our services. The information you provide will be kept confidential in accordance with our Privacy Policy. It will not be shared outside of Shropshire Council. Information collected via our online surveys (hosted on the Surveymonkey website) will be stored on SurveyMonkey’s servers in the United States of America and SurveyMonkey gives an undertaking never to disclose the survey questions or your responses to others without permission.