School and social care transport contracts

The following information is designed to support individual drivers, passenger assistants and operators to become registered to be able to work on home to school and adult social care contracts.

Individual drivers or passenger assistants

If you are an individual driver or passenger assistant you will need to:

• apply or renew your authorisation to work on home to school and adult social care transport
• apply for a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Enhanced Disclosure checked against child and adult workforce
• complete or renew appropriate training

If you wish to apply to work on these contracts, you will need to Apply for a Home to School and Adult Contract Badge.

On receipt of the form, we will contact you to make an appointment to help you with the submission of an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checked against the child and adult workforce. Once your disclosure has been issued, you must subscribe to the DBS Update Service within 30 days and give consent to the council to check the status of your DBS record.

The full set of contractual requirements that will apply to all contracts can be found in Contractual Requirements (Appendix 2) (PDF, 1 MB).

Training

You must complete appropriate training before we will issue a badge.

All staff must complete our safeguarding course.

Before undertaking the duties of a contract, all drivers and passenger assistants may also require further training appropriate to the contract which may include, but not be limited to, Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle training and Passenger Assistant training. A charge may be made for such training courses.

All drivers and passenger assistants must undertake periodic refresher training as determined by the council, which shall normally be at three-yearly intervals. A charge may be made for such training courses.

The council, at its discretion, may require any driver or passenger assistant to undertake further training where necessary and appropriate.

Operators

If you are an operator that would like to bid for home to school and adult social care contracts, you will need to register as a transport operator on our Dynamic Purchasing System.

Register as a transport operator on our Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS)

To be able to become a registered transport provider, you must become registered on our Dynamic Purchasing System. This will enable access to bid for contracts when they become available on our e-tendering portal.

This DPS is for transport to and from mainstream and special education needs schools, swimming venues and adult social care establishments. This will cover the Durham County and surrounding areas.

To register, please complete our Selection Questionnaire (SQ). To be included on the DPS, bidders will only have to pass the SQ stage once during the lifetime of the DPS. Those who pass the requirements of the SQ will have a place on the DPS and will receive Calls for Competition. Calls for Competition will be a request to submit prices and capacity for specific transport routes.

To access the questionnaire, please register as a provider on the North East Procurement Organisation (NEPO) OPEN Portal.

View the NEPO Portal Instructions (PDF, 221 KB).