Published date: 3 August 2023

Last edited date: 22 August 2023

This notice was replaced on 20 November 2023

This notice does not contain the most up-to-date information about this procurement. The most recent notice is:

Awarded contract (published 20 November 2023)

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Contract summary

Industry

  • Research services - 73110000

Location of contract

England

Value of contract

£10,000 to £41,665.83

Procurement reference

GFMSJ230803

Published date

3 August 2023

Closing date

30 August 2023

Closing time

12pm

Contract start date

11 September 2023

Contract end date

31 March 2024

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

Yes

Description

Natural England are commissioning research to investigate the potential of Regional Farm and Rural Support Groups (RFRSGs), specifically through their role as aggregators, to stimulate Green Finance markets and support key place-based environmental planning initiatives such as LNRS. The objectives of this research are to:

1) Understand the coverage of RFRSGs or similar initiatives across England.

2) Characterise RFRSGs in England (with focus on geographical scale, membership, governance structures, level of engagement with Green Finance and links to local governance arrangements and delivery frameworks) to assess their individual and collective potential to act as a Green Finance aggregators and support place-based environmental planning.

3) Produce a heat-map to visually illustrate the above and identify gaps in national coverage and capacity to engage with Green Finance markets and support place-based environmental planning.

4) Explore and demonstrate the potential of RFRSGs to attract natural capital investment and support its distribution through a series of case studies aimed at exploring RFRSGs state of readiness and capacity to act as aggregators in local emerging ecosystem service markets.

5) Provide a series of recommendations aimed at:

a) RFRSGs: to facilitate their engagement with emerging Green Finance markets and highlighting best practice to enable other RFRSGs to follow suite

b) Policy makers: to increase awareness of the potential of RFRSGs to support Green Finance policy and direct finance flows to deliver landscape scale environmental goals

c) Responsible authorities: to increase awareness of the potential of RFRSGs to support and deliver on integrated place-based environmental planning.

More information

Attachments

Additional text

To apply for this opportunity you must submit your quotation meeting the requirements detailed in the Request for Quotation (RFQ) attached.
Your response must be sent to stephen.jones@naturalengland.org.uk by 12 midday on 30th August 2023.

If you have any clarification questions linked to this opportunity or the procurement process please submit these via email to stephen.jones@naturalengland.org.uk. Please note that, unless commercially sensitive, both the question and the response will be circulated to all tenderers.

About the buyer

Contact name

Stephen Jones

Address

Apex Court
City Link
Nottingham
NG2 4LA
England

Email

stephen.jones@naturalengland.org.uk