Tender
North Yorkshire seeks a lead organisation for Harrogate extra care scheme
By Staff Writer | 25 August 2026
North Yorkshire Council has gone to market for a lead organisation to design, build, finance and operate an extra care housing scheme on a site it has acquired at Cardale Park, Otley Road, Harrogate. The notice was published on 24 August 2026 at 1:30pm under the identifier 080357-2026 and records an estimated value of 30,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax.
The procedure is an open competitive flexible procedure under the Procurement Act 2023, in a single lot referenced LOT-0000, under the council's own reference 618-NYC-HA. The tender deadline is 30 November 2026 at 12:00pm, the enquiry deadline is 16 November 2026 at 5:00pm, and the award period ends on 31 March 2027. Returns are made through the council's electronic tendering system.
The notice records that the anticipated value of the scheme is approximately 36,000,000 pounds including value added tax, and that the potential subsidy value is anticipated to be approximately zero to 2,250,000 pounds including value added tax. It states that any subsidy requested is not guaranteed and that any application will be assessed against the subsidy scheme conditions in the tender documents. The contract duration is anticipated to be 27 years and 2 months, from 1 May 2027 to 31 August 2054.
Three obligations in one appointment
The notice sets out what the lead organisation must have the capacity, expertise and responsibility to deliver, either itself or by leading collaborative arrangements with others: design and build, finance, and scheme operation and service delivery. That is a single counterparty carrying construction risk, funding risk and a twenty seven year operating obligation, and the notice permits it to be a consortium provided one organisation leads.
The length is the defining feature. A construction period of roughly two years sits inside a term running to 31 August 2054, so the great majority of the contract is operational. For a bidder, the construction price is the smaller half of the exercise: the specification decisions taken in 2027 have to be lived with for a further quarter of a century, and the lifecycle and replacement assumptions built into the operating model will move the bid more than the build cost will.
The subsidy range published on the notice runs from nothing to 2,250,000 pounds including value added tax, and the notice is careful to say that any subsidy requested is not guaranteed. Against an anticipated scheme value of approximately 36,000,000 pounds including value added tax, the upper end of that range is a little over six per cent. A bidder is being told to model the scheme both with and without it.
Dates the notice calls indicative
The notice gives an indicative start on site date of 1 September 2027 and states that the scheme is intended to be operational by autumn 2029. It also records expressly that the dates are indicative and may change subject to planning approvals, and the published contract period begins on 1 May 2027, four months before the indicative start on site.
The planning position is therefore the open variable. The council has acquired the site but the notice does not record a planning consent, an application, or an allocation, and it makes the timetable conditional on approvals rather than on the procurement. Where a design, build, finance and operate contract is signed before consent is granted, the allocation of planning risk between the council and the lead organisation becomes the first commercial question in the documents, and the notice does not answer it.
What the notice does not publish
There is no unit number, no accommodation schedule and no statement of the care model that the extra care designation implies. Extra care housing covers a range of provision, from self contained homes with a visiting service to schemes with registered care on site, and the specification, the staffing model and the operating cost differ sharply between them. The notice classifies the requirement under both construction work and health and social work services, which indicates the breadth without settling it.
No form of contract, payment mechanism or rent and charging structure is given, and there is no indication of how the operating payment is indexed across twenty seven years. Nor does the notice state whether the site is transferred, leased or retained by the council. Enquiries close on 16 November 2026 and tenders on 30 November 2026, which leaves two weeks between the two, and on a scheme of this length a bidder who waits until November to start asking will not have time to use the answers.