Statutory and non-statutory Advocacy: future service planning

Manchester City Council is inviting organisations to participate in a Preliminary Market Engagement exercise regarding a review of statutory and non-statutory Advocacy service delivery.
Please note the following explanation of the Council’s approach to preliminary market engagement; the core principle for underpinning our approach is to ensure probity be maintained throughout the process by strict adherence to the following guidelines:
All potential suppliers are informed that they are invited to participate in soft market testing
Any information provided by the authority to a supplier participating in preliminary market engagement will be shared with all suppliers participating in the exercise.
Any information provided by a supplier participating in preliminary market engagement will be deemed as commercially sensitive and handled by the authority in such a manner as to ensure commercial confidentiality is not violated.
Any information provided by a supplier participating in preliminary market engagement will not be shared with any third party without the express permission and written consent of the participating supplier.
The preliminary market engagement exercise is to be undertaken to ascertain if the Council wishes to proceed to a competitive tender process and if so will help inform the design of any future procurement process and will assist the Council to shape their requirements to ensure that they obtain the best solution to meet their needs and that will be most attractive to the market to ensure as much competition as possible.
If the outcome of the preliminary market engagement is such that the authority decides to go out for a competitive tender (N.B: the Council reserves the right not to do so if it so decides or to utilise other procurements routes open to it such as pre-tendered national/regional/other frameworks), then all suppliers who have participated in the preliminary market engagement will be notified of the tendering...