Procurement

Our procurement practices

Our procurement practices and procedures recognise the principles of 'best value', thereby ensuring the delivery of cost effective and efficient services. All our goods, services and works will be procured in an open and transparent manner.

Visit our supplier selection page for details about the criteria we look for in a successful supplier.

Our procurement procedures

Our procurement and contracting procedures are designed to ensure that we achieve 'best value' from the money we spend. The value of a contract

determines the procedures that we must follow. Simplified, these include:

purchase order
written quotes
full tender exercise
a procurement process in line with European Union (EU) procurement directives.

We sometimes undertake services of a specialist and demanding nature at very short notice. External stakeholders often dictate these instances. In these circumstances, we source suitable suppliers from existing framework agreements.

Advertising of contracts

Please see our new tenders page for details of any planned forthcoming work, and also our current tenders page for any tenders which are currently in process.

As well as placing contract notices on our website:

We advertise all high value contracts exceeding the EU financial thresholds in the supplement of the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).
Where appropriate, we advertise lower value contracts at Supply2gov.
Additionally, we actively seek to advertise contracts through appropriate and relevant mediums. These may include trade and/or professional journals.