Print page
Procurement policy
- Executive Summary
- Purchasing Activity
- Competition
- Regulatory Requirements
- Modern and Sustainable Procurement
Executive Summary
Within English Partnerships competitive processes are split into two categories – procurement and disposal. Procurement covers the typical purchase of services, supplies and works required to enable project delivery and to manage our premises. Disposal covers the sale of land to developers for the development of residential, commercial or mixed use schemes. Disposal of land is subject to separate policy and strategic aims.
English Partnerships is committed to achieving value for money, in terms of quality and price, for all its procurement activity. In order to achieve value for money English Partnerships will endeavour to clearly communicate our requirements and evaluation criteria, as an informed purchaser, and to establish levels of competition appropriate to the size and complexity of the purchase. Throughout the competitive process English Partnerships will also seek to adopt the highest possible standards of probity.
English Partnerships is committed to ensuring that its public procurement obligations are complied with, including references included in the Financial Memorandum issued on 16 March 2004 by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and Public Procurement Regulations 2006 (SI No.5).
To reflect English Partnerships regional delivery and devolved decision making the responsibility for procurement decisions often rest at a regional level. There is no central procurement function as such other than the advice and facilitation given by the Procurement and Tendering Team, based in Gateshead. A wide range of corporate functions exist which support the procurement process and where appropriate framework agreements (or panels) have been established for professional and technical consultants.
The requirements of English Partnerships’ procurement policy, strategy and procedures apply whether procurement is being administered directly by English Partnerships staff or by external consultants.
Purchasing Activity
English Partnerships is involved in the procurement of a wide range of goods, services and works. The main areas of activity are summarised as follows:
Supplies
English Partnerships’ business activities do not normally require significant amounts of goods and supplies. There can be significant one-off supplies purchases and a recent example was the supply of land drainage equipment which was procured in parallel to the associated Works contract. English Partnerships will procure these requirements itself in accordance with its public procurement obligations.
The operation and maintenance of a network of offices across England requires the purchase of goods and supplies to ensure these offices operate smoothly. Other than the purchase of IT equipment, cleaning and security which are procured at a national level, the purchase of such goods and services are delegated locally and often reflect office sharing and other arrangements.
The procurement of supplies is an area where English Partnerships is likely to continue to take advantage of collaborative purchasing agreements and national frameworks operated by the Office of Government Commerce, and other public bodies where permitted.
Services
English Partnerships’ business involves procurement of significant levels of consultancy advice across a wide range of disciplines including legal, economic evaluation, masterplanning and engineering consultancy. In order to ensure English Partnerships maintains strong working relationships with its consultants and is able to access high quality services and competitive prices national framework agreements have been established.
Changes to the EU Procurement Directives in 2004 and the increased requirement for mini-competitions has meant mini-competitions are widely used for instructions within our panels. This has established clear benefits in improving the fairness, transparency and robustness of appointment decisions within the panels.
Although some of the efficiency benefits have been eroded, the establishment of the panels is still a major part of English Partnerships’ procurement policy. It is therefore envisaged that the panels will continue to provide English Partnerships with the vast majority of services required to support project delivery.
The main panels are summarised as follows:
- Legal
- Economics
- Property
- Technical
- Project and Cost Management
Other panels exist for public relations, marketing and for estate management. Details of when these panels are due to be open to competition are available on request. The future development of a buyer profile will enable this information to be more readily available.
Other elements of English Partnerships’ activities involve procurement of other services including security, site maintenance and cleaning. Site security has recently been brought into a national framework, with site specific maintenance and cleaning requirements procured on a site by site basis.
English Partnerships also procures relatively modest levels of services in relation to administrative or staffing matters.
Works
Other than Works necessary from time to time on the buildings owned by English Partnerships the majority of Works procurements are associated with bringing land and/or property to the market. This can include demolition, decontamination, drainage, road building and other site specific works.
At present there are no frameworks for these Works and as such the procurement of these will either involve establishing a tender list for smaller, simpler contracts and advertising larger works projects.
A landscape contractor listing is maintained and its structure is under review at present.
English Partnerships’ partnership working means that subsidised Works contract can arise where English Partnerships will need to rely on the procurement arrangements of public and private sector partners. The nature of these arrangements will depend on nature of the Works contract and local arrangements adopted by partners.
Competition
English Partnerships’ financial memorandum in conjunction with the EU procurement thresholds provides a mechanism for increasing the level of competition based on whole life valuation of costs. A particularly complex procurement may lead to higher levels of competition being adopted.
- Expenditure below £3,000
Such small requirements do not require competition, but staff and consultants acting on behalf of English Partnerships have a duty to achieve value for money and must retain appropriate evidence of this.
- Expenditure in excess of £3,000 and below £25,000
This requirement must be subject to competition. This may take the form of written quotations where a formal competitive tender situation would result in disproportionate administration costs, unacceptable delays or inefficiencies. Either three or four such quotations should be sought. This quotation process will be administered locally.
Written quotations includes email, fax and letter.
- Expenditure of £25,000 to EU threshold
The minimum of three formal competitive tenders must be returned. In order to ensure the highest standards of probity tenders are submitted centrally to English Partnerships’ Gateshead office, completely independently of those involved in the decision making process to ensure tendered amounts are recorded in a robust and controlled manner.
The number of tenders invited should take account of the possibility of submissions not being returned. Therefore, unless there is certainty that three tenders will be returned, four or five tenders will usually be invited.
- EU Threshold and above
All English Partnerships procurement activity must be in accordance with the European Communities Public Procurement Regulations. If a contract is expected to equal or exceed these limits for Supplies, Services or Work English Partnerships will comply with these requirements.
Supplies
Services
Works
From 1 January 2008 £139,893
£139,893
£3,497,313
Furthermore English Partnerships is committed to not disaggregating the values of contracts to circumvent these thresholds.
For the avoidance of doubt English Partnerships is committed to achieving value for money both in terms of quality and in terms of price. With reference to procurement (rather than disposal of land) both quality and price factors will be considered together with quality price ratios being used to help decision making. Details of any relevant ratios and evaluation methodology will be disclosed in the tender documentation.
In order to cover the potential for the UK Government to adopt the Euro at any time in the future all systems procured by English Partnerships which handle price information will have to be able to handle the Euro should this be required as a result of the UK adopting the Euro as its currency.
Regulatory Requirements
The Financial Memorandum requires that English Partnerships’ procurement policies conform to relevant Treasury guidance documents including Procurement Policy Guidelines and account is taken of all relevant EU and other international procurement rules. Further details can be found from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) website.
It is the responsibility of the Procurement and Tendering Manager to ensure this document is updated to reflect changes to published guidelines.
The following requirements should be treated as the minima and tender lists should be of sufficient size to take account of the possibility of all submissions not being received. A summary in tabular form is shown in the table below.
The limits noted above are extracted from English Partnerships’ Financial Memorandum (issued 16 March 2004) and are subject to periodic update.
In order to satisfy our Financial Memorandum commitments procurements valued over £100,000 will usually be subject to an assessment of the company’s financial strength and capacity by our Business Appraisal function.
The above requirements and other guidance is collated in English Partnerships’ Competition, Tendering and Financial Vetting Rules, which are available to all English Partnerships staff and consultants managing procurements on our behalf.
Modern and Sustainable Procurement
English Partnerships is committed to developing its procurement arrangements to reflect changes in good and emerging practices including the increasing focus on sustainable procurement.
Collaborative Purchasing
English Partnerships will typically take the lead and ownership of procurement activities directly linked to delivery of projects. Where appropriate such procurement arrangements are open to project partner and other public bodies to utilise.
For many years English Partnerships has operated panels or framework agreements to facilitate efficient appointment of advisors to our projects. It is envisaged that these arrangements will continue and be re-procured when they expire.
The Property, Technical and Project and Cost Management panels are available to other government bodies involved in regeneration projects. English Partnerships also leads the collaborative procurement of insurance where a number of Regional Development Agencies have pooled their property interests together.
English Partnerships will consider taking advantage of collaborative procurement arrangements established by other bodies when procuring administrative or premises arrangements. English Partnerships has and will continue to take advantage of national frameworks procured by the OGC and others where there is a clear value for money benefits. Examples of this include lease cars and mobile communications.
eTendering
Submission of tenders is a key part of both English Partnerships procurements and disposal of land. The wide variety of types of tenders combined with their often complex nature in terms of the financial structures and inclusion of complex drawings and imagery has led to a cautious approach in this area. As such etendering is limited to the following activities:
- Submission of OJEU notices via direct interface with the EU commission rather than by email or fax
- exchange of information during the process
- question and answer documentation
- submission of pre-qualification information
- Publication of tender documents and other information on a specific websites and extranets for key projects
- Increased use of CD-ROM copies of tenders to reduce the numbers of written submissions.
English Partnerships is currently reviewing the feasibility of establishing an etendering solution across all or part of our tendering activities.
It is envisaged that a buyer profile will be established during 2008/09. In the interim, copies of “live” OJEU and other adverts are published on the Current Opportunities page.
Other electronic processes linked to procurement are the operation of panel mini-competitions via email, electronic instruction of professional and technical services from our panels, electronic ordering and invoicing arrangements.
Sustainability
English Partnerships is committed to sustainable development and as such our procurement arrangements are under continual review to ensure that they support these wider aspirations. Environmental sustainability forms part of our shortlisting arrangements and where appropriate forms a key part of specifications and evaluation criteria for the award of contracts.
As with all public bodies English Partnerships is obliged to establish increasing levels of understanding and application of environmental sustainability across our business and management of our premises.
© English Partnerships 2003-2008