How we buy
The Council has established procedures for offering work or
buying products and does not usually respond to unsolicited
enquiries or applications. However, in limited cases these
procedures can vary due to type of product or service being
purchased as well as its value. All contracts valued in
excess of £10,000 are typically competitively tendered. Full
details related to the process can be seen in the Contract
Procedure Rules section of the Council Constitution.
Goods and supplies
Although some spot
purchasing for low value items is undertaken by the Council on an
ad-hoc basis, the bulk of our general supplies are purchased
through pre-tendered corporate contracts. These are negotiated by
us or, more commonly, as part of wider public service consortia, eg
the Office for Government Commerce (OGC), and Central Buying
Consortium (CBC).
The contracts are usually between three and five year terms and
are advertised via public advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union
(OJEU) and relevant trade journals. This method provides the
Council with choice, high quality standards and best value.
Arranging, negotiating and monitoring of contracts is devolved
throughout the Council, and is the responsibility of various
officers in various departments.
Services
Some of our main services are regularly exposed to
competition.
For example:
- Grounds maintenance
- Street Cleansing
- Waste Collection
These high value contracts typically last for between five and
10 years. A tender evaluation model is used to measure the merit of
each bid, and the Council's decision is based on a range of factors
that offer the best value in terms of capability, quality of
service and not necessarily lowest price.
Our standard procedure for letting contracts follows a
well-established tendering process. Usually, the contractors have
undergone a rigorous examination of their financial stability,
technical competence, operational methods, health and safety and
employment practices.
Increasingly, the Council is seeking to enter into
innovative partnership arrangements with organisations that provide
inward investment and development of the services.
The Council welcome enquiries and ideas about alternative solutions
to traditional methods of service provision.