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Created by Jon Davey
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Access to Public Procurement
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer has pledged to switch spending priorities to “areas which make a difference”, referring specifically to small businesses.
This could provide an important lifeline to struggling small businesses, but it will fail unless accompanied by a rationalisation of the public procurement bidding process. Unfortunately, only 16 per cent of public procurement contracts are awarded to SMEs6. Recent survey work conducted by the FSB revealed that over 50 per cent of small businesses do not apply for public procurement contracts due to the complexity of the application process.7 In particular the lack of a simplified and universal pre-qualification questionnaire that could be used for low value contracts and that would only have to be filled in once and then logged for future bids. The time it takes to resubmit a full pre qualification questionnaire for each new bid is time that small businesses do not have. This could be resolved with the following simple measures: - Introduce a single pre-qualification questionnaire to be used in all public procurement contracts; - Scrap the fee for receiving nationwide access to public procurement contracts via Supply2.gov.uk The FSB has also found that 51 per cent of small businesses do not apply for public procurement contracts because they do not have free access to the supply2.gov.uk website advertising new contracts8, which currently requires a £180 registration fee for information about contracts across the UK9. It is free for a limited geographical area of your choice, but should also be free for nationwide access. Universal free access to information on public procurement contracts, and a simplified bidding process would vastly increase public sector business opportunities for small businesses. Find out the latest from the FSB www.fsb.org.uk 6 Ref: BERR 7 “Evaluating SME Experience of Government Procurement” Joint report from FSB, CBI and BVCA, October 2008
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