Local Government Procurement Award
Awarded to the local authority or regional procurement agency/hub that demonstrated better value to the taxpayer through an improved procurement process.
2010 Winner: Peterborough City Council
In October 2006 Peterborough City Council set itself an ambitious target of £24m cumulative savings over five years. Already rated a ‘good’ authority with a commitment to achieving excellence and keeping council tax low, it launched a business transformation programme to drive performance improvement and cost reduction. The council worked with V4 Services procurement culture from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’, and to set up a strategic, commercial approach to procurement. One key project for 2008/9 was the launch of a demand management programme.
After conducting a commercial procurement diagnostic of the council’s non-salary spend, six key areas of expenditure were identified to deliver £750k of cashable savings within the financial year 2008/9. This was to be achieved by concentrating on demand management of discretionary spend areas, namely room hire, catering, training and conferences, agency staff, travel and accommodation, translation and interpretation and office furniture.
£1.58m was extracted from departmental budgets, double the original savings target of £750k. Helping to achieve this was a rigorous use of Oracle financial reporting, and regular meetings with Business Managers to update on progress together with monthly reports. These savings have been embedded in future budgets and in 2009/10 a further £377k of new savings have been achieved through the continuing demand management process. The cost of resource to implement the project was £55k; return on investment was 2800 per cent in the first year.
To ensure wide ranging penetration of the new policies and ‘smarter spending’ culture, a comprehensive communications programme was planned and executed. This included dedicated intranet pages, poster campaigns, management briefings, articles in the staff journal, and inclusion in all Oracle and requisitioner training as a key area for attention Partnerships. Suppliers were engaged to embed the new policies and procedures.
Three years on, Peterborough's efforts have achieved £48.43m of cumulative savings, with 75 live projects at any one time, and a further three-year programme of transformation being established to maintain momentum. This is set against a scene of increased demand for council services such as benefits and council tax, where volumes have risen by 30%.
Commended:
Surrey County Council
North West Collaborative Commercial Agency
Leicestershire County Council
Derby City Council
