Department of Health and Social Care

39 Victoria Street

London

SW1H 0EU

UK

E-mail: procurement.operations@dhsc.gov.uk

NUTS: UKI32

Internet address(es)

Main address: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

Address of the buyer profile: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

II.1.1) Title

II.1.2) Main CPV code

85145000

II.1.3) Type of contract

Services

II.1.4) Short description

Provision of services to support the UK Covid-19 testing strategy.

II.1.6) Information about lots

This contract is divided into lots: No

II.1.7) Total value of the procurement

Value excluding VAT: 152 000 000.00  GBP

IV.1.1) Type of procedure

Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition

Justification for selected award procedure:

Extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable for the contracting authority and in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive

Explanation

Negotiated procedure without prior publication

1) The Covid-19 outbreak is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern as declared by the World Health Organisation on 30 January 2020. The WHO Director General characterised Covid-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020.

2) A key element of ensuring an effective response to the pandemic is ensuring that there is adequate testing. Therefore, the scaling up of laboratory capacity is critical to this response. This contract supports the national testing programme, in particular Pillar 2.

3) DHSC is satisfied the tests permitting use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication (Regulation 32(2)(c)) are met:

A. as far as is strictly necessary: the creation of a clinical diagnostic centre to provide Covid-19 detection testing to support the UK response to Covid-19 was identified as strictly necessary to meet the demand to scale up the testing programme in the UK;

B. there are genuine reasons for extreme urgency: It is responding to Covid-19 immediately because of public health risks presenting a genuine emergency;

C. The events that have led to the need for extreme urgency were unforeseeable: the Commission itself confirmed: ‘The current coronavirus crisis presents an extreme and unforeseeable urgency – precisely for such a situation our European rules enable public buyers to buy within a matter of days, even hours, if necessary.’ (Commissioner Breton, Internal Market, 1 April 2020);

D. it is impossible to comply with the usual timescales in the PCR: due to the urgency of the situation there was no time to run an accelerated procurement under the open, restricted or competitive procedures with negotiation as there was an urgent requirement to ensure the scaling up of testing facilities in response to the pandemic;

E. the situation is not attributable to the contracting authority – DHSC has not done anything to cause or contribute to the need for extreme urgency.

IV.1.8) Information about Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)

The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: Yes

AstraZeneca

03674842

1 Francis Crick Avenue

Cambridge

CB2 0AA

UK

E-mail: garry.farwell@astrazeneca.com

NUTS: UK

The contractor is an SME: No

VI.4.1) Review body