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

Who the Council buys from

The Council recognises its responsibility to support the local economy but is also subject to pressures from central government to reduce the cost of bought in goods and services by engaging with other organisations to achieve economies of scale. The Council will choose the most appropriate supplier having regard to cost, quality and service issues.

We will work to understand the supplier’s perspective and market the council to suppliers.  We are aiming for a diverse and competitive supply base to help improve value for money and to develop suppliers to meet new or emerging requirements. The Council will work with representatives of SMEs and other community organisations to ensure that they become aware of the opportunities for supplying the Council. The vale of the White Horse District Council intends to sign up to the Small Business Friendly Concordat before the end of March 2008. For more information about this you can download the "Small business friendly concordat: good practice guidance" from the right of the page.

The Concordat is a voluntary, non-statutory code of practice. The purpose of the Concordat is to set out what small and medium-size organisations supplying Local Government can expect when tendering for Local Authority contracts. It is not intended that smaller suppliers automatically be given a competitive advantage, but that contracting authorities ensure that all suppliers are treated equally.

The Concordat also sets out the standards that public sector buyers should expect from their suppliers. A copy of the Concordat can be found on this page of the Communities and Local Government website. 

The council will work with prime contractors – both at tender stage and during the life of a contract – to establish the contribution that small firms, ethnic minority businesses, social enterprises and voluntary and community sector suppliers can play in the supply chain. We will provide details of our prime contractors on our website.