Purpose

Following a multi-year funding settlement between 2022-2025, the Home Office provided a single-year funding settlement for 25/26. In January 2026, the Home Office confirmed a further single-year funding settlement for financial year 2026/27.

Due to tight timeframes between the confirmation of the 26/27 funding settlement in January 2026 and the start of the financial year in April, subsequent Home Office sign off of the VRU’s delivery plan, and the nature of a single-year funding settlement, it is not possible to run a re-procurement exercise on the open market. This decision is therefore based on a procurement exemption to enable the direct award of a new standalone contract to Manchester Metropolitan University, for the provision of evaluation activity, for financial year 2026/27. A procurement exemption has been sought as, following legal advice, it is not possible to vary ManMet’s current contract any further.

This approach enables GM VRU to maintain continuity of provision, and mitigates the risk of experienced staff leaving both providers and GMCA VRU positions, which would have a detrimental effect on evaluation delivery. In addition, ManMet continue to have a direct link to GMP Data via its Big Data centre, meaning that ManMet are uniquely placed to deliver the required evaluation activity.

Until 26/27, it haD been stipulated by the Home Office that VRUs must spend a minimum of 10% of their yearly budget on programme evaluation. The Violence Reduction Unit commissioned ManMet in 2022 to deliver multi-year programme evaluation, and participatory youth framework activity to assist with the creation of the Greater Than Violence strategy.

For 2026/27, the Home Office has not specified a minimum evaluation spend in 2026/27, however an evidence-based approach remains integral to VRU delivery, and the Home Office continues to strongly encourage evaluation where appropriate, with specific activity to be determined locally.

In line with the Home Office guidance, the VRU will therefore continue to require evaluation support in 2026/27, including a continued focus on systems change evaluation to identify and evaluate the impact of the GM VRU across the wider system in which it operates. £210,000 of the contract value will be used for this core VRU purpose to evaluate VRU cross-system activity. An additional £30,000 has been allocated to enable flexibility to engage with MMU in relation to other key workstreams, which will also support activity to keep Greater Manchester’s children and young people safe, and tackle, prevent, and reduce serious violence.

Decision

GMCA Safer & Stronger Communities (Violence Reduction Unit) wish to directly award a standalone contract for the VRU’s Programme Evaluation and related activity to Manchester Metropolitan University (ManMet), for a period of 12 months from 1st April 2026 – 31 March 2027. ManMet are the current VRU evaluation provider, and have provided evaluation services to the Greater Manchester VRU since 2022. The value of this contract award is £240,000 for financial year 2026/27.