Issue - meetings

RESOLVED THAT

the revised Procurement and Contract Management Strategy be approved.

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services introduced the report which brought a revised Procurement and Contract Management Strategy for approval. He explained that this GO Shared Services Procurement strategy replaced the CBC corporate procurement strategy 2007-2012 - an overarching common strategy for all four partners that included agreement for UBICO and Cheltenham Borough Homes.

He informed Members that the contents of two specific government bills had contributed and added to the content of this strategy. Firstly the Public Services Social Value Act 2012 and the Public Contracts Regulation 2015. The former act placed a duty on local authorities at the "pre-procurement" phase to consider how and what was being procured might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being in their community.

The Cabinet Member highlighted that the principal priorities of the strategy were as follows:

1) the delivery of efficiencies and quality and

2) the development and embracement of socially responsible and sustainable procurement by engaging with local and regional suppliers to promote the local economy and to take account of the social, economic and environmental impact of spending decisions

The key points to note were

1) collaboration with other bodies such as Gloucestershire Procurement Partnership, Oxfordshire Procurement Hub, Local Enterprise Partnership and Federation of Small Business

2) New public contract regulations-engagement with SME's

3) Strategy code-officers and councils to follow set procedures to comply with regulations

4) Good practice-a template covering Social value, Health & Safety, Equalities plus Transparency and Contract Management.

The Cabinet Member informed the meeting that this strategy was discussed at the June meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and it was agreed to investigate with other districts possibilities to create preferred supplier lists and make every effort to explore possibilities of scaling down very large contracts in order to further increase opportunities for smaller local businesses to bid.

The Cabinet Member concluded by saying that the performance and achievements of the new strategy would be monitored by Internal Audit.

RESOLVED THAT

the revised Procurement and Contract Management Strategy be approved.

Cabinet Member Corporate Services will give a verbal update on the draft strategy

The Chairman introduced this item by explaining that there had been discussion about withdrawing the item from the agenda as a result of no covering report having been produced.  The Cabinet Member Corporate Services had explained that GOSS hoped that all partners (Cheltenham, Cotswold, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire) consider the strategy at their July Cabinet meetings and as such, the Chairman had agreed that the Cabinet Member could instead provide a verbal update in support of the draft strategy. 

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services introduced the draft Procurement and Contract Management Strategy which covered all four GOSS partner authorities, as well as CBH and Ubico and would replace the existing CBC Corporate Procurement Strategy.

GOSS considered it necessary to develop a common approach to achieve effective procurement across all partners and this included a shared procurement strategy.  Two pieces of legislation (the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 which were laid in Parliament on 5 February 2015 and came into force on 26 February 2015 and the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012) had also raised a number of amendments.   He felt that the Social Value Act was particularly interesting as it placed a duty on local authorities, at the ‘pre-procurement’ phase of procuring services, to consider how and what was being procured might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being in the community.  Another interesting addition, and particularly relevant to O&S given that they had raised something on the issue when he had last updated the committee in October 2014, was the reference to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and the addition of an aim for the strategy to stimulate the local economy and support local businesses and communities.  He acknowledged that the committee had not been given very much time to consider the strategy and that there was only a short period of time before it was scheduled for consideration at Cabinet, but reiterated that the delay had been due to the new legislation. 

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services gave the following responses to member questions;

·         The council did not have a preferred supplier list, however Cheltenham had developed a call-off contract; a list was developed for a specific tender with a list of list of preferred contractors.  The Cabinet Member would look at whether any other districts in the county used a preferred supplier list. 

·         Internal Audit would monitor performance and achievements and report back to the Audit Committee.  The suggestion was that the O&S Committee could review whether culture was changing and how those using the strategy felt it was working.  It was suggested that 12 months would be suitable time to undertake this review.

 A member echoed comments he had made in the past, that the culture of the organisation needed to change so that contracts were not of such a scale that smaller, local businesses couldn’t bid, though he admitted that a larger number of small contracts would require more in the way of managing.