Children’s charity Spurgeons has secured a £5m contract to run 17 children’s centres in West Essex.

The two-year contract from Essex County Council covers Harlow, Epping Forest and Uttlesford, and Spurgeons will provide the services from April 2012.

The 11-month bidding process was over three phases and has been described as both “rigorous” and “intense” by the organisation’s CEO Tim Jeffery.

Spurgeons is one of the largest voluntary sector providers of children’s centres in England and currently runs 40 centres throughout the country. It has also recently won a contract for four more centres in the Solihull area. The West Essex contract is its first in the county and takes the nationwide total to 61 centres.

In its last financial year, to 31 March 2011, Spurgeons had income of £12.9m and expenditure of £14.2m.  Its spending has outpaced its income in each of the last three years.

The children’s centres will provide support to hundreds of families with young children in the West Essex area. Child poverty figures in England are predicted to rise to over four million in the next three years and Spurgeons is committed to helping families at the greatest disadvantage and providing care to under-fives.

Val Floy, Spurgeons’ director of business development, commented: “Spurgeons is proud of its work in incomes-based accountability and will be using this approach to measure our impact in West Essex.”