Somerset Council, case management system for the drug and alcohol service (ERFX1003379)

Recommendation: needs document. The tender pack sits behind a Proactis supplier account that Carepatron does not hold. Creating one submits our legal and tax details, so it is your call, not mine.

I did find a second notice the scorer had not seen. It changes how this opportunity reads, and not in our favour. My honest view is below. Read it before you decide whether the Proactis registration is worth doing.

What the check asked

"Register on Proactis for ERFX1003379 and read the spec for mandatory NDTMS reporting and multi-agency data sharing."

I could not do the first half. We hold free vendor accounts on BidNet Direct, NYS Contract Reporter, Virginia eVA and InstantMarkets. Proactis is not among them, and the standing rule is that I never open a new vendor account. So the check is unresolved on the document.

What I can say is that the two things the check names are almost certainly both in the spec. That is reasoning, not a quote, and I have set out the basis below.

What I could read

Two Find a Tender notices, both published by Somerset Council, and the machine-readable OCDS release behind them.

The tender notice, published 7 October 2026.

Somerset Council is looking to procure a secure, hosted, fully supported, multi-agency, web-based Information/Case Management System for use by professionals involved in clients' support for substance misuse.

• Reference ERFX1003379. CPV 48000000, software package and information systems.
• Estimated value £400,000 excluding VAT, £480,000 including VAT, above threshold.
• Contract 1 January 2027 to 30 June 2030, two possible 24-month extensions to 30 June 2034.
• System go-live 1 July 2027.
• Competitive flexible procedure under the Procurement Act 2023.
• Award criteria: price 50 per cent, quality 45 per cent, social value 5 per cent.
• Stated as suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises.
• Enquiry deadline 23 October 2026 at 12:00. Tender deadline 9 November 2026 at 12:00.
• Award decision estimated 4 December 2026.
• Documents and submission both via Proactis, project reference ERFX1003379.

The market engagement notice, published 4 March 2026. This is the one the scorer did not have. It is linked to the same procurement identifier and it names the service.

Somerset Drug and Alcohol Services are commissioned by Somerset Council and provided by Turning Point. They provide an all age, cross county specialist drug and alcohol specialist treatment service for Somerset. They work out of 3 hubs and provide outreach to community hubs and other sites. They provide additional specialist services for specific groups, for example rough sleepers, people involved in the criminal justice system, young people and their families. They work closely with other health and related services.

It also records that Somerset ran an expressions of interest exercise closing 13 March 2026, with supplier demonstrations in the week of 16 March 2026.

Neither notice states a staff count or a client count.

What this tells you, and why it matters

Three things stand out.

The end user is Turning Point, not the council. Somerset Council commissions the service and is buying the system. The people in it work for a national charity provider, plus criminal justice, young people's and outreach partners. That is the "multi-agency" in the title. We would be selling to a commissioner, configuring for a provider, and serving several organisations in one tenancy.

The market was already engaged seven months ago, with demos. Somerset asked for expressions of interest in March and ran demonstrations the following week. Carepatron did not take part. We would come to a 45 per cent quality score cold, against vendors who have already shown the council their product and heard what it wants.

NDTMS is the probable centre of the requirement. The National Drug Treatment Monitoring System is run by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. Around 680 English treatment services submit a monthly extract to it, and services treating both drug and alcohol clients are required to report the full adult community dataset. A system bought specifically for substance misuse professionals in England will be expected to produce that submission. I have not seen Somerset say so in writing, which is exactly what the check was for.

Carepatron has nothing in the claims library on NDTMS. We have no claim either way, so any response would have to carry a verification question rather than an answer.

My read on fit, from the notices only

No hard disqualifier appears. It is not inpatient, not Medicaid, not ONC, not FedRAMP, not on-premise, not a staffing contract, and not an enterprise consolidation. The ask is genuinely a hosted web system for outpatient behavioural health, which is our category.

The problem is the specialist layer on top, and the frictions are real ones from our own library:

Price at 50 per cent is the one strong tailwind. We are cheap against purpose-built NDTMS vendors, and the SME suitability statement is genuine.

Against that, five of the six rows above are gaps a UK council commonly makes mandatory. The rubric caps anything with two or more stated-mandatory gap frictions below PURSUE. I expect the spec to state at least three.

Every route I tried

1. Find a Tender notice page. Fetched in full. Gave scope, dates, award weightings and the contact. No documents attached.
2. Find a Tender OCDS release and record. Fetched both. The record listed a second release that nobody had looked at, which is how I found the March market engagement notice. The documents array lists the tender pack as id future, access details "Available via Proactis". No file is published.
3. Contracts Finder, keyword search and the OCDS search API. Searched the reference and the title, and swept all 47 tender-stage releases published between 1 and 8 October 2026 for a Somerset match. Not there. Somerset published above threshold to Find a Tender only.
4. Proactis public endpoints. /Account/Login returns 200. /Opportunity/Search, /Opportunities, /Opportunity/PublicOpportunities and /CurrentOpportunities all redirect to a not-found page. The login page carries exactly one route onward, which is /Account/Registration/Register. There is no public opportunity browser to read.
5. Proactis registration. Not attempted. This is the standing rule, and it is the right one here: registration submits Carepatron's legal and tax details.
6. Somerset Council's own website. Read the "how to do business with us" and "procurement information" pages in full. Both point suppliers to Proactis. Neither mirrors tender packs.
7. Somerset Council democracy site. democracy.somerset.gov.uk search returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. A web search for a decision record covering this procurement found the substance misuse commissioning decisions but nothing naming the case management system.
8. Aggregator mirrors. Searched Stotles, BidStats and Tenders Direct by title and buyer, and searched the reference number directly. No mirror carries it. The notice is one day old, so the aggregators have not indexed it.

The single thing that unblocks it

You, or Jamie, registering Carepatron on the Proactis Supplier Network and opening project ERFX1003379. Registration is free, and Somerset's own market engagement notice says so. It is yours rather than mine because the form submits company registration and tax details, and because submission runs through the same account if we ever bid.

The account is reusable. Somerset says it uses Proactis in line with many other South West local authorities, so this opens a region rather than a single tender.

If you would rather not register

The council published a direct contact on the notice, so there is a route that does not touch the portal. Enquiries close 23 October 2026, which is 15 days from today. Send this, or your own version of it, before then. I have not sent anything.

To: [email protected] Subject: ERFX1003379, Case Management System, Drug and Alcohol Service, request for tender documents Dear Joanna Hunt, Carepatron is a cloud-based practice management and clinical records platform used by health and wellness professionals, and we are considering a response to ERFX1003379. Before we register on Proactis, could you send the specification and the question set, or confirm whether they can be released by email. We would particularly like to understand the requirements for NDTMS reporting and for data sharing between the service provider and partner agencies, since those will decide whether we are a credible bidder. Thanks for your help. [name, title] Carepatron

Score

Recorded score unchanged at 62, verdict still REVIEW. I have not moved it, because the rule is that a verdict only moves on a document and I did not get one.

For your decision, my read after the two notices is lower, somewhere near 45. The drop is not about the category, which is right for us. It is about the specialist reporting layer, the multi-agency interoperability, the five gap frictions a council usually makes mandatory, and a market engagement round we missed. Price at 50 per cent is the one thing arguing the other way.

Treat 45 as my estimate from notices alone, not a scored read of the spec.

Next action for you

Decide on the Proactis registration, or send the enquiry email, by 23 October 2026.

If the account opens before then, tell me and I will resolve the check and draft in the same run. The tender closes 9 November 2026, which is 32 days from today, so there is time for a full response if the spec holds up. My expectation is that it will not, and that this ends as a no bid. I would rather find that out from the specification than from a guess.

Sources

• Find a Tender notice 094813-2026, "Case Management System - Drug and Alcohol Service", Somerset Council, published 7 October 2026. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
• Find a Tender notice 019608-2026, preliminary market engagement for the same procurement identifier, Somerset Council, published 4 March 2026. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
• Find a Tender OCDS release and record packages for ocds-h6vhtk-066260. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
• Contracts Finder OCDS search API, tender stage, 1 to 8 October 2026. 47 releases, no Somerset match. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
• Somerset Council, "How to do business with us" and "Procurement information". Retrieved 8 October 2026.
• Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, NDTMS quality and methodology information and adult community business definitions, via ndtms.net and gov.uk. Used only for the statement that submission is monthly and required of services treating drug and alcohol clients.
• library/claims.json, claim ids cited inline in the fit table.