Context
Vale of White Horse District Council (Vale) has published its spend above £500 in order to be transparent and allow anyone to view what we have spent our money on. The data download contains all payments made by the council and has been provided as a means for others to analyse as they see fit. However, in order to make our spend information more consumable to our citizens and other interested parties, the information on these web pages only include spend that has been categorised according to an industry standard classification scheme which classes ‘charitable organisations’ and ‘councils’ as not being core trade suppliers. For example, our leisure centre management supplier is set up as a charitable organisation. In addition, the council is working increasing in partnership with South Oxfordshire District Council (South) to deliver better value for money public services. The current spend analysis does not include cross payments between the two councils when one takes the lead. A final reason why Vale’s spend total differs from South’s is that South’s spend analysis potentially includes some capital purchases.
For residents
Whenever we buy services, we always evaluate whether it is most cost effective to provide a service in-house or to source it from outside. We’ve often found that the most cost effective option is to use companies who bring expertise from their market knowledge, and this has given us a history of contracting out services. Our current large contracts are listed at www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/procurement.
One of the reasons that our spend with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) appears low is that our main contractors buy many lower value goods and services as part of the contract, so that we do not procure these things directly. However our supplier base includes many local suppliers and we recognise the importance of developing local business and encouraging them to work with us, helping to create local jobs and to reduce our carbon impact.
One of the reasons our spend per household appears low is that we have had a constant focus on costs and have reduced expenditure significant through efficient working practices while maintaining or improving the quality of services to residents. We’ve also saved money by merging our management and many functions with South Oxfordshire District Council.
For suppliers
We've tried to make it fair and easy for all suppliers to do business with the council by publishing useful documents at www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/procurement. As councils are forced to make more efficient use of declining budgets, we are increasingly working in partnership with other councils in Oxfordshire to achieve economies of scale through joint contracts and aggregating procurement of related items.
We encourage SMEs to apply for contract opportunities and we are proud to have signed up to the Small Business Friendly Concordat. This is a voluntary, non-statutory code of practice whose purpose is to set out what SMEs supplying local government can expect when tendering for local authority contracts. We obviously can’t give any company an unfair advantage over another, but we do ensure that all suppliers are treated equally and that SMEs have an opportunity to compete. We also undertake to help small businesses by paying their invoices in ten days.
There is a list of our current contracts at www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/contracts which links to the South East Business Portal where we have registered all our recurring contracts over £5,000. Any current opportunities for suppliers appear at www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/tenders.
If you are a supplier and want to find out about future opportunities anywhere in the south east, go to www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/contracts and register (for free) with the South East Business Portal for your chosen areas of interest. You'll then get an email every time there is a relevant opportunity, including with this council. There are links where you can register with other regional portals.