Tenders

Invitation to tender for Outline Infrastructure and Sustainability Assessment for High Growth Areas

Infrastructure constraints across Cheshire and Warrington have the potential to limit new development. These constraints cover various vectors including energy supply, water supply, heat and cooling provision, and biodiversity net gain requirements for new developments – particularly where overlapping priorities for housing development, industrial decarbonisation, and energy generation overlap. An initial evaluation at these high growth locations for key infrastructure and sustainability linked constraints, utilising, analysing, and synthesising existing datasets, will identify key priorities for further work over the near term.

ECW are seeking a consultant(s) to work alongside ourselves and Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWAC), Cheshire East Council (CEC), and Warrington Borough Council (WBC) to conduct an initial high-level Infrastructure and Sustainability assessment at high growth places (c. 10 total areas, to be communicated to the successful bidder) across Cheshire and Warrington. Given a tight budget and timeline, initial work will be constrained to a given number of vectors and available data to enable screening at these locations and provide early evidence ahead of future detailed work.

This evidence will inform future work across the subregion, including broader energy planning, Regional Energy Strategic Plan submission development, Local Authority planning, and potential work on a Growth Plan, and Spatial Development Strategy – with the underpinning blockers and opportunities at these key high growth locations clearly noted in advance of further business case development around these sites.

The successful bidder will also need to provide a high-level sustainability analysis for the pipeline at each of the high growth places. The Cheshire and Warrington Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Strategy, recently published for consultation, states our ambition to be the most sustainable, inclusive, healthy, and growing place in the UK by 2045. It is vital that new development is carried forward in line with these ambitions, and an early pipeline assessment at each location to better understand impacts on climate and nature is vital to ensure

The successful bidder will be required to deliver services in accordance with all tender documents and the contract to be placed with the successful bidder. Tenderers are requested to study the specification in detail and ensure that the specified requirements can be met and thus your understanding of our requirements is reflected in your Pricing Schedule return.

The contract is expected to commence Thursday 16th October with the exact dates to be agreed depending on the agreement between the successful provider and ECW.

The Contract will be awarded for approximately 8 weeks, and the appointed consultant(s) will be assessed for satisfactory performance through continuous monitoring and performance review.  We expect the consultant(s) to produce interim outputs by late November, and final outputs by 19th December 2025.

This tender is published subject to funding, with funding confirmation expected to be received mid-September.

The successful appointees will:

• Produce a high-level infrastructure constraints analysis for Cheshire and Warrington – identifying major overlaps between constraints on:
  • Energy Supply
  • Water Supply
  • Water Quality
  • Heating and Cooling Demand
  • Nature
• Estimate infrastructure demands and identify major constraints for each priority site across this same range of vectors for the proposed place-based developments.
• Produce a high level sustainability analysis for the project pipeline at each identified priority site.
• Provide data to ECW in a coherent integrated set of GIS layers that can be used for future work.

Further detail of requirements can be found in the specification at Section 3.

Budget 

This tender is published subject to funding. A budget of up to £25,000 excl. VAT is expected to be available for this work.

If you have any specific questions concerning this document or the process for submission of your proposal, then please email through to: tenders@cheshireandwarrington.com no later than Monday 22nd September 2025, 09:00. Only questions submitted to this email address will be answered.  Queries received after this date will not be accepted and will not be responded to.

It would be most helpful if queries could be submitted in one email rather than piecemeal. If any question or request for clarification is considered to be of material significance, both the question and the response may be issued for review by all potential providers in a suitably anonymous form. All communication received from potential providers will be treated in strict confidence but are subject to this paragraph.