Purpose

This report seeks permission
for a non-permitted extension and variation to the Appropriate
Adults contract. The current contract ended on the 30 September
2024, and this report seeks an extension until to 31 December 2025
jointly with Sutton Council and Mayor’s Office
for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to the existing contract for an
Adults and Children and Young Persons (CYP) Appropriate
Adults service, post 1 January 2025 the service will be for
children and young people only.
 
The extension will ensure
Croydon continue to meet their statutory obligation under the 1984
PACE Act. The extension is valued at £73,645.40 with a cost
to the council of approx. £48,144.60 with Sutton Council and
the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) funding the
remaining amount. The aggregated value of the contract is
£648,645.40 with Croydon’s share of the expenditure
approximately £303,565.
 

Content

For the reasons as detailed in
the Part A report and Appendix, the Corporate Director for
Children, Young People and Education AGREED:
 
To
approve:
 

·        
a non-permitted extension by way of variation of a
contract for the Appropriate Adults Service with The Appropriate
Adults Service (TAAS) until 31 December 2025
 
To
note:
 

·        
that whilst retrospective approval of the extension
is not sought, the additional value of this extension is divided
into two elements;

·        
From 1 October 2024 until 31 December 2024 for a
combined Adult and Children’s Appropriate Adult contract the
additional contract value is £37,500 of which 46%
(£17,250) will be supported by a grant from MOPAC, leaving
approx. £17,820 to be funded by the London Borough of Croydon
and approx. £2,430 by the London Borough of Sutton;

·        
From 1 January 2025 until 31 December 2025 for an
Appropriate Adult Service for Children and Young People only, the
additional contract value based on existing usage and paid at a
revised rate of £42.50/hr will be £36,145.40 of which
£30,324.60 will be due from London Borough of Croydon and
£5,820.80 will be due from London Borough of
Sutton.

·        
The total value since October 2024 is therefore
£73,645.40.

·        
that the original contract ended on 30 November 2023
and has served its maximum contract term with extension. A
non-permitted contract extension was approved to cover the period
of 1st December 2023 to 30th September
2024. PB-2425-000002-EV.
The services have continued since then without
formal governance approval.

·        
The aggregated value of the contract with TAAS is
thus £648,645.40. Croydon’s
share of the expenditure is approximately
£303,565.
 
 

Reasons for the decision

Providing an Appropriate Adult
service for children and young people is a requirement for all
Local Authorities under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence
(PACE) Act. 
 
The existing provider is
performing well and delivering a high-quality service, often
praised by the Metropolitan Police, and evidenced within the KPIs
in the appendix. Given the nature of the Appropriate Adults
role and the context of meeting the young person there is a
understandably a paucity of service user feedback, the comments
received though have thanked the Appropriate Adult for their role
in supporting the young person at what may have been a difficult
time. 
 
The provision until 31 December
2024 was to provide Appropriate Adults services to both vulnerable
adults and children in Croydon and Sutton and was jointly funded by
both local authorities and the Metropolitan Police. However
following a change in the guidance whereby the police are
responsible for securing provision for vulnerable adults, the
Metropolitan Police via the Mayors
Office for Police and Crime (MOPAC) undertook a procurement
exercise to deliver a London-wide appropriate adults only contract
to go live in at the beginning of 2024, this was delayed and the
new service eventually became live on 31 December 2024. As this
service was planned to be for adults only Local
Authorities continued to be responsible for delivering an
Appropriate Adult service for children and young
people.
 
An extension is necessary
to;
 
·        
understand the impact on the service delivery model
of the tender and disaggregation of the vulnerable adults element
of the contract;
·        
undertake a strategic review of the options for
delivering appropriate adults services for children and young
people;
·        
give time for the existing providers to undertake
the complex realignment of services following the letting of the
new MOPAC contract, and;
·        
give time for a tender to take place should this be
deemed appropriate.
 

Alternative options considered

Option 1: Do nothing – not
recommended

·       
Not extending the contract or putting an alternative
service in place will lead to a breach of our statutory obligations
under the 1984 PACE Act.

 
Option 2: Decommission the service as
soon as possible – not recommended

·       
While decommissioning the service is possible, this
is not recommended as a service will still need to be spot
purchased. Given TAAS are the primary provider of Appropriate
Adults within London, and few others will be ready to facilitate a
client need of this size, it is very likely that spot purchases
will be via TAAS. This may lead to an increase in costs.
Option 3: Spot purchase per client
– not recommended

·       
Appropriate Adults services have previously been
spot purchased. However, this seems to have been largely phased out
with MOPAC funding supporting contracts and the funding not
covering spot purchase arrangements. When attempting to benchmark,
it proved challenging to find any costs, or boroughs still using
spot purchasing arrangements.

 
Option 4: Bring the service in-house
– not recommended

·       
Pre-2015, the Appropriate Adult service was carried
out in-house via a combination of the Emergency Duty Team (EDT) and
social workers. This arrangement was challenging as neither group
were being specifically trained and accredited for the service,
eventually leading to the initial outsourcing with the previous
provider.

·       
An in-house offer funding a Co-ordinator has worked
well in other Councils and would be eligible for MOPAC funding
should the service cover more than one borough. However, the
current provider has demonstrated a high-quality service with
supersedes what we have been able to deliver in-house previously,
across a larger geographical area.

 
Option 5: Direct award to an
alternative provider – not recommended

·       
While possible due to the value of the expected
remaining period, it is unclear whether this would directly lead to
savings. The same funding rules would apply, and so this approach
would need to be joint with another London borough (very likely
Sutton, as they are content with the existing service)

 
Option 6: Extend and vary the existing
contract – recommended

·       
This will allow time for the change of providers
as a result of the MOPAC decisions to
bed in and for a Tender to be advertised with a view to a new
contract being in place for 1 January 2026.