Essex Renewal Fund - Lettings and Facilities Management Soft Market Testing August 2025

Overview

Purpose of this exercise

The Essex Renewal Fund (ERF) is a revolving investment fund for land and property projects within Essex that support Essex County Council’s (ECC’s) objectives.

Following a soft market testing exercise in January 2023, ECC competitively procured Fund & Asset Management services for ERF, and appointed Montagu Evans.  The Council is now looking to procure Lettings & Facilities Management services for the Fund.

As the ERF portfolio is expected to be varied and change over the contract period of up to 10 years, the contract specification must be flexible, but pricing must be competitive and predictable. To help us design an appropriate contract and procurement process, please answer the questions below (via the Share your views link).

Context

When answering the questions, please assume a snapshot portfolio of:

• Out of county (existing assets only, no further acquisitions):
  • A retail park in Keighley consisting of 11 retail and leisure units
  • Four storey office block in Watford with 4 tenants
  • Four trade counter units in Guildford with 2 tenants
• Inside of county (future assets, illustrative examples):
  • A 20,000 sq ft Innovation Centre in Chelmsford with 25 tenants
  • Industrial grow-on-space, 12 units at 5,000 sq ft each in Clacton
  • And 10,000 sq ft of R&D / lab space units with 5 tenants

Requirements

A - Lettings and facilities management: We expect the level of service per site to vary based on the type of asset and ERF’s fund and asset management strategies. We have therefore summarised the core service requirements as follows:

• Level 0 – Vacant land and/or premises.  Services would be limited to management of risks e.g. security, health and safety management, environmental management
• Level 1 – Single or multi-tenant site, with lease(s) on a Full Repairing and Insuring (FRI) basis.  Services would include those in Level 0, plus additional site-related services e.g. rent collection, lease enforcement, service charge management, car parking barrier maintenance, snow and ice clearance, landscaping, pest control, external lighting and signage
• Level 2 – Single or multi-tenant site, with lease(s) on an Internal Repairing and Insuring (IRI) basis.  Services would include those in Level 1, plus limited additional services in communal areas e.g. cleaning, planned general maintenance, potential lift maintenance, window cleaning, PAT and fixed wiring testing
• Level 3 – Managed workspace, with flexible underleases.  Services would include those in Levels 1 and 2, plus comprehensive services in communal areas e.g. reception, recycling and waste management, energy management (bureau services), chilled potable water
• Please assume that services such as hospitality and printing facilities would be contracted separately
• Please assume that residential property management would be contracted separately

B - Lettings transactions: These include lettings/sub-lettings where ECC is the landlord, rent reviews, lease renewals and dilapidation settlements where ECC is the landlord or tenant, and rates management.

C – Project-related: For example, reactive maintenance, dilapidation surveys, court hearings and estate surveys.

Questions

The rest of the form covers 19 questions around five areas; Contracting & Delivery Method, Lettings & Facilities Management Fees (Outside of Service Charges); Lettings Transactional Fees; Project Related Fees; Overall Procurement.

Click "Share your views" below to submit a response.

PDF of a copy of the description and questions for reference.