Blog 2 - National Procurement Policy Statement

Hello!

So, the new Procurement Act, for those interested in working with UK government and public bodies, goes live on the 24th of February (Monday next week).

We've addressed this topic in a previous webinar, which you can find here. I work with my friend Gemma Waring on it. Apparently, it's actually happening rather than being delayed again, which is a bit of a surprise in some ways, but good news. The government have of course released their accompanying policy statement far too late, on Thursday afternoon. The Policy statement document goes hand in hand with the new act. It in effect states the overarching objectives that all public bodies should be aligned with in their procurements from the 24th of February onwards.

It's quite an interesting read (link). It's obviously very aspirational and positive. There are some really good bits in here about delivery of value for money and some appendixes / links to new social value policy notes that should be reviewed. There is a slightly pointed statement about making sure that public bodies aren't being charged too much in fees by framework providers. I wonder who or what that's about. That's going to be an interesting dynamic in the coming months and years as the various framework providers duke it out.

For us in winning work – there are a couple of interesting bits in here from a capture perspective. There is an onus on public bodies from this statement to prove that they couldn't deliver the service or product themselves in house. Their first point of principle should be to look to deliver it themselves, which, you know, from a labour perspective, is very laudable in theory. Apart from the fact that, in my experience in 25 years of working with UK Public sector - that's a rubbish idea. There's lots and lots of mood music about the rail franchises and all that stuff and how they haven't performed, and yes, some companies haven't performed wonderfully. But very often, if you actually map it back to the root causes - it comes back to how they were procured and how those contracts are managed. For instance,hwen I was a lad at Mouchel in outsourcing, we knew that if we asked people to fill in a timesheet, we would get a 10% efficiency gain immediately, overnight. And so, we just we bear that in mind.

In terms of the capture of your deals therefore, we're going to need to help clients build the business case for outsourcing the service. It should be obvious, particularly in markets like construction, but clients will probably be a bit nervous about that, and so we'll need to help them with that. I wonder what the impact might be on the other extreme of making direct awards for instance.

Have a read. I'm sure there'll be more stuff that comes out of it, but that's the first hurdle I've spotted. They're gonna have to prove that they need to procure something so dwell on that. Take the action you think you need.

Have a great week.