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Collaboration on EXPLORE project Outcome Measures

NATURAL ENGLAND

Buyer Contact Info

Buyer Name: NATURAL ENGLAND

Buyer Address: Seacole Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, UKI32, SW1P 4DF, United Kingdom

Contact Email: izabella.roberts@defra.gov.uk.defra

Status
complete
Procedure
direct
Value
45000.0 GBP
Published
02 Jan 2026, 15:48
Deadline
n/a
Contract Start
01 Dec 2025, 00:00
Contract End
31 Mar 2027, 22:59
Category
n/a
CPV
73110000 - Research services
Region
n/a
Awarded To
University of Exeter
Official Source
Open Find a Tender

Description

This agreement has a value of £45,000 and is between Natural England and the University of Exeter, to support the development of EXPLORE. The contract will run from the 30th November 2025 until the 31st March 2027. EXPLORE is a fully developed IT solution to support strategic decision-making by local authorities. It uses health, wellbeing, nature and sustainability as the common targets for almost all local government work. It has been codeveloped with local authorities, and will be published in Spring 2026. EXPLORE has four domains. These represent the final outcomes from almost all local authority activity and are Health, Wellbeing, Nature and Sustainability. To support Local Authorities in planning for these domains EXPLORE has three components. These are OUTCOME MEASURES (quantitative measure of current progress in each domain), FACTOR MAPS (diagrams show most of the things which influence outcomes) and HORIZON SCANNING. EXPLORE will support Local Authorities to do rapid and holistic planning supporting the government’s development agenda. Under the Procurement Act 2023, this direct award is justified as ‘due to an absence of competition for technical reasons and provided there are no reasonable alternatives, only a particular supplier can supply the goods, services or works required’. This is because the University of Exeter have been a key partner throughout the development of EXPLORE, through RENEW (A Natural Environment Research Council-funded project, which NE participates within). EXPLORE is built into theme 2 of RENEW. Key academic stakeholders have collaborated on the digital dashboards and other web-based components with Natural England and have the necessary expertise to ensure that the EXPLORE web-based components will be successfully delivered. Therefore, they are best placed to take over from the current supplier with regards to managing and keeping the web-based product up to date. Additionally, given the nature of this procurement (i.e. below the Procurement Act threshold of £139,688), this is a below threshold STA and therefore is compliant with PA23.

Linked Documents

No linked documents found for this notice.

Opportunity Context

Lots

Lot 1 Status: complete

Contracts

Contract Title: Collaboration on EXPLORE Project Outcome Measures

Raw Notice JSON

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