Procurement

Our procurement policies and procedures are summarised below and reflect the guidance of the Office of Government Commerce. For a complete copy of the Standards  for England's procurement procedures, contact Richard Broom, Head of Finance.

Purchase and contract values

Selection of suppliers

Tender evaluation

Significant contract awards

Purchase and contract values

Purchases and contracts with an expected value of less than £4,999 are awarded on the basis of best value in the particular circumstances.

Purchases and contracts with an expected value of more than £5,000 are subject to a full tendering process.

The purchase or contract may be exempt from competitive tendering if:

• it has an expected value of no more than £25,000 and there is no reasonable alternative supplier
• it is extremely urgent (for example, there are issues of public risk)
• we have the agreement of our sponsor department, Communities and Local Government

Selection of suppliers

We will attract potential suppliers by advertising in appropriate media and government publications, and by individually sourcing companies and inviting them to tender. For larger contracts (valued over £139,983), we publish invitations to tender in the S series of the Official Journal of the European Union in accordance with European regulations.

In addition, we are registered with OGCbuying.solutions, which enables purchasing through a range of government frameworks.

Tender evaluation

Tender evaluation is carried out in strict accordance with the objectives and criteria originally outlined at the time the contract was put out for tender (usually in the invitation to tender). A standard matrix is used to compare all tenders, incorporating project targets and objectives, with relevant weightings allocated to each item according to its importance.

On some occasions, shortlisted suppliers will be invited to make presentations providing further information before a decision is reached.

The successful company will be notified as soon as the tender is formally approved. Unsuccessful companies will be notified within seven business days later.

Significant contract awards

Description	Awarded to	Estimate contract value (£)
Reserch: Assessing the Impact and effectiveness of the Ethical Framework	Cardiff Univeristy	384,707
Conference venue	ICC	125,000
Recruitment and Response Handling	Search Consultancy / Capita Resourcing	100,000
Software Development	ETC Group	100,000
Training Design and Delivery	REED	93,000
Research: Satisfaction with the Standards Board.	BMG Reseach	86,760
Event Management for Annual Assembly	Benedicts Business Resources	85,706
Exhibition Stand	Protean Design	66,890
Landline telecoms	Charterhouse Voice & Data	65,000
Visual Identity and Literature for Annual Assembly	The Chase	52,161