Procurement Procuredures

Procurement Procedures & Regulations

Procedures for purchasing are known as “Contract Procedure Rules”. These are important as they help to:

• give a legal and auditable framework to our procurement activities
• obtain value for money services for the public
• ensure we comply with the law governing the spending of public money
• protect our staff and members from undue criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.

Here is a summary of our main procurement procedures:

• For purchases under £5,000, at least one quotation must be obtained (unless the purchase is through one of our corporate contracts).
• For purchase over £5,000, a minimum of three written quotations/ tenders must be sought.
• For purchases over £50,000, three written tenders must be sought using a formal invitation to tender document.

There is also a legal requirement to comply with EU Procurement Directives for contracts over certain specified thresholds.

As at October 2007 these thresholds stood at £144,371 for services and supplies and £3,611,319 for works contracts.

The regulations are based on the following principles:

• Contracts that exceed the thresholds must be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) so that all interested parties in member states have an equal opportunity to submit tenders;
• All enquiries must receive equal treatment in order to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of nationality of the contractor or the origin of the supplies, services or works; and
• All supplier selection, tendering and award procedures must involve the application of objective and transparent criteria.