The national procurement strategy sets out how local government, working together with partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors, should improve the way they procure goods and services to achieve best value. Strategic objectives are set in relation to the following four themes:

1. Providing leadership and building capacity.
2. Partnering and collaboration.
3. Doing business electronically.
4. Stimulating markets and achieving community benefits.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Department for Communities and Local Government) set out a target in the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government that by 2006 it wanted to see local governments:

"Delivering significantly better quality public services that meet the needs of all local citizens through sustainable partnerships they have forged with a range of public, private, social enterprise and voluntary sector organisations."

The strategy reinforces the link between procurement and best value, illustrating how to use innovative ways to procure, work in partnership with others, and manage services that will:

• Better achieve community plan objectives.
• Deliver consistently high quality services that meet users' needs, with a range of partners from other sectors.
• Provide savings and better value for money, thereby improving cost effectiveness of the council.
• Build social cohesion and promote equality of opportunity for service users, businesses and council staff.
• Be sustainable for the communities and areas served and benefit local citizens.
• Support delivery of the council's eGovernment agenda.
• Enable councils to manage and assess risks in the marketplace.
• Be delivered through different structures and in new forms.

Its main recommendations are that councils should:

• Deliver better quality public services through sustainable partnerships they have forged with a range of organisations.
• Confidently operate a mixed economy of service provision, with ready access to a diverse, competitive range of suppliers providing services from the public, private, social enterprise and voluntary sectors.
• Obtain greater value for money via their procurement.

As part of the national strategy, Centres of Procurement Excellence have been established in nine areas - including the North West http://www.nwce.gov.uk - to improve best practice and innovate changes in council procurement.

For further information, visit:
national procurement strategy

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