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FSB East Berkshire is happy to be associated with Business in Berkshire
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Local Authority procurement findings
In the UK, local authorities (LAs) spend around £42 billion per annum on procuring goods and services. The FSB has recently been highly critical of the fact that at present far to little of this money is spent with small businesses. However, LAs are coming under joint pressure from the Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister and the Office of Government Commerce to increase the amount of their annual procurement budget spent with small businesses.
In order to understand how LAs have structured their procurement strategies so as to encourage small firms to bid for contracts, SEPU created a ‘Local Authority Procurement Checklist, which was sent to the Chief Executive of every council in the South East. The checklist included a range of questions aimed at identifying how Las had restructured their procurement procedures in order to make them more small business friendly. To date, 46 per cent of LAs have responded to the checklist and the early findings reveal some very interesting information.
Being able to learn about potential procurement opportunities is a key step for small businesses, and one of the most obvious sources of information would be their council procurement website. LAs were therefore asked whether they currently had a procurement section on their website. As you can see from the table (on the pdf), over 60 per cent of LAs have a procurement website, and a further 12.5 per cent were currently in-development.
However the website is only as good as its content, and it is important that LAs advertise ALL contracts on their website in order for small businesses to learn about potential tendering opportunities. The table above demonstrates that at present a quarter of councils currently advertise all contracts on their website, in contrast to the 44 per cent that do not.
One of the main proposals put forward in the recent FSB report ‘Small Businesses and Public Procurement’ was that:
“The pre-qualification paper work should be simplified and the accompanying information requirements should be relevant and minimal.”
The survey findings revealed 31 per cent of Las have a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) adapted for small businesses (see pdf), and a further 6 per cent were currently revising their PQQ to achieve this objective. Half of the LAs that responded to the survey did not have a PQQ adapted for small businesses.
| DOWNLOAD | | [ South East Policy Unit Newsletter November 2005 ] |
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