CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE – OFFICIAL JOURNAL

Section I: Contracting Authority

I.1)

Name, Address and Contact Point(s)

I.2)

Type of contracting Authority and Main Activity or Activities

Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local sub-divisions National or federal agency/Office Regional or local Authority Regional or local Agency/Office Body governed by public law European Institution/Agency or International Organisation

General public services Defence Public order and safety Environment Economic and financial affairs Health Housing and community amenities Social protection Recreation, culture and religion Education

Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs

Section II: Object of the Contract

II.1)

Description

II.1.1)

Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority

Hosting, Support and Development of Legacy Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) scheme IT system (GENESIS).

II.1.2(a))

Type of works contract

II.1.2(b))

Type of supplies contract

II.1.2(c))

Type of service contract

II.1.2)

Main site or location of works, place of delivery or performance

England.

II.1.3)

This notice involves a framework agreement

II.1.4)

Short description of the contract or purchase(s)

Natural England is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Natural England administers Agrienvironment schemes under Pillar 2 of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE). These schemes cover some 70 % of the farmed environment in England. Nearly 400M GBP in scheme grants is paid to agreement holders annually to:

— create, protect and enhance wildlife habitats;

— protect soils and natural resources;

— conserve protected landscapes;

— protect archaeological sites and historic landscape features;

— provide opportunities for recreation and education.

The European Commission expects to agree the overarching policy of the new Common Agricultural Policy in 2013 (CAP 2013). This will consist of a series of regulations that will determine how schemes for agricultural subsidies support production (Pillar I) and programmes to promote rural development (Pillar II) should be administered in the future. Separately, Defra is procuring solutions for the delivery of those future schemes. During the transition between the current and future CAP and future IT solutions, Natural England will continue the provision of its current IT systems; to enable us to continue to administer our existing ongoing multi-annual agreements, manage their migration into the future systems when those become available, and meet our obligations under the regulations governing the EU-funded CAP schemes. The scope of the contract will consist of: a)the secure hosting of the existing application components and capabilities, either reusing the existing hardware assets solution; b)providing application support and service desk to Natural England's business users and working with our service management team to provide a resilient service that meets Natural England's business needs; c)delivering changes to the application to meet changing business needs through the CAP transition; d)working with our service provider to effect the seamless transition of services, minimising downtime and impacts to Natural England's business, whilst continuing to deliver changes into the system in parallel to meet our challenging timescales for implementing EU policy change; e)working in co-operation with Natural England's other IT providers and those of other Government Agencies to manage interfaces and dependencies; f)working with the Defra CAP Delivery Programme to manage the successful transition and migration of data from the current system into the future solution. Our systems are a complex, multi-environment set of IT capabilities and components that employs multiple technologies, including databases, application server, workflow, web-server, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Enhance Transform Load (ETL), business intelligence and reporting capabilities and bespoke components. Services will be transitioned into future systems and the hardware decommissioned. The expected start of the contract will be from 1.4.2014

II.1.5)

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

II.1.6)

Contract covered by the government procurement agreement (GPA)

II.2)

Total final value of the contract(s)

II.2.1)

Total final value of the contract(s)

Section IV: Procedure

IV.1)

Type of procedure

IV.1.1)

Type of procedure

IV.2)

Award criteria

IV.2.1)

Award criteria

IV.2.2)

An electronic auction has been used

IV.3)

Administrative information

IV.3.1)

File reference number attributed by the contracting authority

IV.3.2)

Previous publication(s) concerning the same contract

Other previous publications

Section V: Award of contract

Contract No:

V.1)

Date of contract award:

V.2)

Numbers of offers received:

V.3)

Name and address of economic operator to whom the contract has been awarded

V.4)

Information on value of contract

V.5)

The contract is likely to be subcontracted

Short description of the value/proportion of the contract to be subcontracted

Section VI: Complementary Information

VI.1)

Contract related to a project and/or programme financed by community funds?

The contract is related to a project and or programme financed by the European Union funds. This programme is the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) 2007 and transition to RDPE 2013.

VI.2)

Additional Information

VI.3)

Procedures for appeal

VI.3.1)

Body responsible for appeal procedures

Body responsible for mediation procedures

VI.3.2)

Lodging of appeals

VI.3.3)

Service from which information about the lodging of appeals may be obtained

VI.4)

Dispatch date of this Notice

ANNEX D

Justification for the choice of the negotiated procedure
without prior call for competition