The new category will take the place of the strategic asset management lot of the same value, and follows positive feedback from organisations which attended Scape’s market awareness days held up and down the country in September.

With a combined value of £150 million, one of the new additions will cover Scotland alone, with the other covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scape said: “The place shaping lot is designed to provide strategic advice for local authorities who are looking to enact comprehensive change to the way they develop and manage place; through challenging and transforming the use of their asset management portfolio; creating development and operational processes which consider the environment and impact on the climate; and how they can best benefit the communities they operate within.

“Place shaping offers a broad range of services and has been principally designed to achieve better outcomes for the commercialisation of assets through major town and city centre regeneration, the modernisation of estate and asset use, and for the strategic asset interventions required to deliver and exceed the climate action.”

The framework is open to individual organisations and consortium bids and will run for a period of four years from August 2020.

The framework will include lots for (Framework & Lot / Lot information / Lot value):

• England, Wales & NI: Lot 1. Built Environment Consultancy. £350m;
• England, Wales & NI: Lot 2. Civil Engineering Consultancy. £250m;
• England, Wales & NI: Lot 3. Place Shaping. £100m;
• Scotland: Lot 1. Built Environment Consultancy. £150m;
• Scotland: Lot 2. Civil Engineering Consultancy. £100m;
• Scotland: Lot 3. Place Shaping. £50m.

Mark Robinson, Scape Group chief executive, said “We had fantastic attendance at our market awareness days, which provided us with essential feedback on how our frameworks can be as closely aligned to our clients’ needs as possible.

“The funding of local services is not simply a matter for technical analysis but is part of a much wider debate about the type of communities that we want to live in. As such, there is significant scope for consultancy services which enact comprehensive change to the way public bodies develop and manage place, through short term transactional interventions and through strategic long term programme management, ensuring that maximum value for money and high quality delivery is achieved along the way.

“We are proud to be paving the way in public sector frameworks by offering this unique service to public sector bodies.”