Supply of Warehouse Services

Concepts

• warehousing services
• dhsc
• bonded warehouse services
• warehouse services
• supply of warehouse services
• safe storage of crucial ppe products
• direct award
• part of an urgent requirement
• use of the negotiated procedure
• prior publication

Location

Geochart for 1 buyers and 1 suppliers

Department of Health & Social Care

Uniserve

+−

Leaflet | Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.

Description

The rationale for the bonded warehouse services was to provide bonded warehousing for the safe storage of crucial PPE products purchased by DHSC in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was part of an urgent requirement and response to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring that PPE, which was required to be distributed across the country was safely stored for DHSC in Shanghai while DHSC arranged for the PPE to be transported to the UK. The contract provides bonded Warehouse services in Shanghai and was a direct award pursuant to Regulation 32 (permitting the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication on the basis of extreme urgency as a result of the pandemic). A formal written contract was not finalised with Uniserve at the outset of this arrangement but the agreement was formalised and signed in January 2023 with a term of 30 October 2020 to 30 September 2022.

Total Quantity or Scope

Under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, DHSC considers Covid-19 to be a state of urgency that has been brought about by circumstances which a diligent contracting authority could not have foreseen. This was also confirmed by the European Commission. A response to the pandemic was therefore required in order to safeguard public health risks and risk to life by securing safe and continued provision of PPE and thus, provision of storage of that PPE. Accordingly, DHSC entered into a contractual arrangement with Uniserve for the provision of PPE storage from October 2020 to 31 March 2021 with extensions to the arrangement from April 2021 to September 2022. The award of this contract followed the negotiated procedure without prior publication pursuant to Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, relying on Regulation 32(2)(c) ‘extreme urgency’.

Award Detail

Award Criteria

CPV Codes

• 63122000 - Warehousing services

Legal Justification

Pursuant to Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, contracting authorities are permitted to utilise the negotiated procedure without prior publication in cases of extreme urgency. The European Commission declared the Covid-19 Pandemic as an event of extreme urgency which was not foreseeable to diligent contracting authorities. DHSC was responsible for purchasing PPE as a response to the pandemic in safeguarding public health risks and risk to life. This contract was commenced at a time where PPE was in short supply and organisations from across the world required supply of PPE. As such DHSC purchased some of its PPE from Chinese suppliers and had to store the PPE supply in China while it arranged for the transport of the PPE to the UK. DHSC considers that the purchase of bonded storage for the PPE in China was strictly necessary, given the high demand for PPE across the world and the fact that the PPE needed to be stored before it could be transported to the UK; the Covid-19 pandemic did create circumstances of extreme urgency for the purchase and storage of PPE brought about by events unforeseeable to DHSC given the unforeseeable nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant that the time limits for the open or restricted or competitive procedures could not be complied with. The events of extreme urgency were not brought about by DHSC.

Other Information

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