Agenda item

To consider a report (copy attached) on how the Strategy is being implemented, its impact on the Authority’s finances and on the local economy, and an assessment on whether all services are consistently applying and adhering to the Strategy and CPRs.

10.20am – 10.50am

In the Lead Member for Finance, Corporate Plan and Performance’s absence the Facilities, Assets and Housing Programme Manager – Business Change introduced the report (previously circulated) which outlined the progress to date with the Procurement Transformation Programme, specifically the impact of the implementation of the Procurement Strategy and the revised Contract Procedure Rules.  In his introduction he detailed the contents of the report and advised that the actual impact of the new strategy on the local economy had been slower than anticipated.  Nevertheless, the Service was working closely with the Economic and Business Development Team with a view to co-ordinating attendance at events to promote the benefits to businesses of trading with the Council, and in a bid to assist small and medium sized businesses to consider tendering for contracts or for supplying goods to the Council, by helping them to register with the Authority as potential suppliers for specific types of contracts or provisions. 

Members were advised that the ‘Commissioning Form’, a copy of which was attached to the report, had proved extremely useful in identifying problems at an early stage for contracts over £25K in value.  All contracts over £10K in value were now required to be entered on to the Proactis system.  There were benefits to the Council of using this system for procurement as the purchaser could not proceed to award the contract unless all required stages and checks had been completed.  This ensured compliance with the Strategy and with Contract Procedure Rules (CPRs). 

One specific area of procurement arrangements which had been identified for improvement was the recording of the percentage spent with local businesses.  The figures for 2015/16 seemed low despite the fact that the County was spending a significant amount of capital expenditure on the new Rhyl High School project.  The reason for this was that the main contractor, Willmott Dixon’s, invoicing address was outside the area.  Nevertheless, the Council was aware that a significant amount of the work on the site and been sub-contracted to local tradespeople and that goods had been purchased locally. Potential solutions for accurate geographical apportionment of the Council’s contract expenditure were currently being explored.  Gwynedd Council seemed to have an effective method for capturing local spend, although fewer large contractors from the North West of England or the West Midlands tended to tender for contracts in North West Wales due to the distances involved with delivering the work.

Responding to members’ questions officers advised that:

·         ten people were employed in the Procurement Team which undertook procurement work for both Denbighshire and Flintshire County Councils.  The team was currently being re-structured.  However, the number of members in the team would remain as at present;

·         the Procurement Team was currently working closely with the Economic and Business Development Team with a view to establish a good knowledge base on small businesses in the area with a view to encouraging them to tender for smaller contracts, or working together to bid for larger contracts;

·         every effort was made to simplify the wording of tender documentation and make it accessible and less time consuming for small and medium sized businesses, who did not employ dedicated contract bidding officers, as the Council as part of its corporate priority of developing the local economy was keen to work with local businesses to encourage them to bid for contracts etc.;

·         the Procurement Team were planning to provide training to new councillors following May’s local elections on how they could help local businesses to interact and do business with the Council;

·         the Council had not set a specific ‘percentage spent with local businesses’ target when developing its Procurement Strategy, it had instead decided that it would be more worthwhile to monitor the local spend element on a regular basis with a view to continually increasing the local spend proportion over time;

·         Procurement Team members were always willing to assist managers with enquiries with respect to procurement practices.  It was extremely encouraging that,  in a recent survey, the number of middle managers who now considered their knowledge of procurement procedures to be either good or very good had increased considerably;  

·         work was currently underway across both Denbighshire and Flintshire with respect of public transport contracts following the demise of GHA Coaches:

·         in line with the requirements of the new Welsh Language Standards all public adverts in relation to contract opportunities will be published in both Welsh and English. There was no requirement under the Standards for supporting documentation to be available in Welsh;

·         once contracts were let the Service who procured the work/goods would be responsible for monitoring the quality of it and ensuring that every aspect was delivered in line with the contract specification;

·         there were frameworks, which included Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), in place for regularly procured works.  For these types of contracts managers would be expected to complete evaluation questionnaires;

·         officers were currently exploring the potential for having a uniform approach for quality assurance across all Council contracts;

·         community benefit requirements had to be applied to all contracts in excess of £1m – the documentation relating to these high value contracts required the successful bidder to evidence the community benefits achieved;

·         the Council was of the view that having a representative from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) serving on the Procurement Transformation Board was a more transparent option than actually having one local business person on the Board, this approach ensured the independence of that appointment; and

·         the Council was bound by public contract regulations when advertising for tenders or letting contracts.  Nevertheless it was always willing to support local businesses, as far as it was legally able to do so, to register on the Council’s business register for tenders etc.

Members suggested that collating data on the number of local people employed under each contract let by the Council could be a useful statistic to measure the local impact of the Strategy and its consequential impact on developing the local economy.

Prior to concluding the discussion the Committee was advised that the recently introduced Minor Works Frameworks would be independently evaluated after six months in operation.  Officers also undertook to enquire with the Economic and Business Development Team on the actual number of local businesses that belonged to the FSB.  It was:

RESOLVED - subject to the above observations that the new Procurement Strategy and revised Contract Procedure Rules (CPRs) had resulted in improved performance of the organisation in relation to procurement activity.