Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

Vale of White Horse District Council

The Council's Procurement Strategy

The Council’s Executive approved the Procurement Strategy for 2007-11 in December 2007. This details how the Council goes about procuring goods and services.

The strategy can be viewed and downloaded from the right of the page, or alternatively this is a summary of the key principles and procedures.

Principles of procurement

Procurement activity supports the Council’s aims in several ways:

• Where services are delivered via third parties, we will ensure that our suppliers provide high quality public services which meet the needs of people within the Vale and improve the quality of life of the community.
• Wherever possible we will contribute towards a strong and sustainable economy in the district by providing opportunities to local suppliers to supply to the Council, without compromising the need to obtain best quality at optimum cost.
• We will assist in controlling costs by cost effective procurement, through ensuring the best possible commercial deals with suppliers and the development of cost effective procurement processes.
• We will endeavour to work only with suppliers with clear policies supporting equality and diversity and opposing prejudice and discrimination.
• We will ensure that suppliers have appropriate health and safety policies, processes and procedures in place to ensure the safe delivery of products and services, thus contributing to a safer community.
• We will endeavour to ensure that sustainability issues are fully taken into account in sourcing products and services to protect and improve our environment.

Procurement policies and procedures

To ensure that we carry out our procurement in accordance with these principles we will ensure appropriate policies and procedures are in place, utilised by appropriately qualified staff. The policies and procedures are explained in the Vale’s procurement manual which will be available to staff.

A summary of these procedures is as follows:

• We will provide potential suppliers with clear specifications of our requirements at the earliest possible stage and ensure these are understood. Wherever possible these will be European or equivalent standards (eg BSI).
• Our purchasing procedures allow competition for business from suppliers, having due regard for the urgency of the requirement and it’s value. In cases of low value and/or urgency we may not obtain multiple quotes.
• For high value purchases (over the EU procurement thresholds) we will publish our contract adjudication criteria at the tender stage to make clear to prospective suppliers how we intend to select the preferred supplier.
• We will debrief (on request and in writing) all parties to a tendering process as to why they were or were not successful.
• Contracts will only be placed on the Council’s standard terms and conditions or appropriate industry standards (eg JCT / ICE for works contracts), except with the authority of the Deputy Director of Contracts and Procurement and the Head of Legal.
• The Council will only contract with suppliers who are committed to continuous improvement and all contracts (other than for one off supply) will include agreed improvement programmes and performance indicators, which will be subject to regular review.
• There will be clear segregation of responsibilities within the procurement process to eliminate the potential for fraud or favouritism and all staff placing contracts on behalf of the Council will be appropriately qualified to ensure the highest ethical standards.
• Procurement processes are expensive to operate and it is the Council’s policy to move to paperless trading wherever possible, through the use of electronic procurement techniques.
• We recognise that our annual spend makes us a small buyer in the local authority arena. We will work closely with and partner with other appropriate organisations within and outside the local government arena in order to be able to deliver best value to the council taxpayer.