Agenda item

The Committee received a report which provided a half yearly summary in relation to compliance with the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules (CPR’s), compliance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and summarised waivers and breaches. It also provided a quick summary of the current procurement culture in the Council. Mr Simon Davis, Head of Strategic Procurement attended to present the item.

This report covered the first six months of the 2022/23 financial year and a summary of all Waivers registered during Q1 and Q2 was provided within the report. There had been one breach of public contracts regulations 2015 which had been reported in the confidential appendix.

During discussion, key points raised included:

• Mr Davis was relatively new to the role with Buckinghamshire Council and highlighted that he had been very impressed with the team and processes used by the Council.
• There was ambition to work more proactively with directorates when using or considering to use waivers so that the number of waivers could decline. Work to address this would commence over the coming months. The proper procedure was undertaken each and every time a waiver was required with legal and financial input from the appropriate teams as required.
• The strategic procurement team reviewed the contract management application on an ongoing basis to ensure that they were aware of contracts coming to an end in the next 24 months and that they could then plan their work with directorates accordingly and ensure a suitable timeline was in place.
• It was noted that in certain situations, waivers were a good tool to use, particularly where legacy councils had similar contracts ending at different times as a waiver could help synchronise the end dates and bring a single contract on to the same timeline to receive best value. Further, certain directorates in local authorities tend to have a higher number of waivers due to their line of work and working with suppliers. The strategic procurement team attended directorate budget board meetings monthly to openly discuss contracts coming up. Where a waiver was used moving forward, the team aimed to request that the waiver be accompanied with a full procurement plan.
• The last paragraph on page 110 of the reports pack should read ‘It should be noted that waivers are not always negative’
• It was queried whether reporting on contracts and waivers and breaches went to the Finance and Resources Select Committee.

ACTION: Mr S Davis to check the governance reporting processes and report back to the Committee

• The Chairman advised of two waivers that appeared within the budget scrutiny inquiry group papers for the Adults portfolio, relating to CAMHS (Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust) and Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust, integrated therapies and queried whether the Committee had previous sight of these. The CAMHS contract was reported to the Committee in January 2022, whilst the integrated therapies waiver was retrospective and as it went through in October 2022, would be reported the next time the waivers and breaches were reported to the committee. The Chairman raised concern that this contract, which was worth over £3.75m required a retrospective waiver, particularly as the contract had previously been extended and noted that further questions would be asked by the Committee when this was reported in six months’ time.
• Training was identified as a key area and improvements were being explored such as including sessions in induction training for new starters who were involved in contracts processes and making refresher training mandatory. A Member requested that where the staff numbers who had completed training were noted in the report, it would be good to include how many this number was out of along with a percentage to get an understanding of the uptake and be assured that those that required training were sufficiently trained.

ACTION: Mr S Davis to review the way training figures were presented in future reports to the Committee.

• Areas for improvement were also being explored in respect of contract management, as often a great amount of effort went in to procurement processes, however after the contract award there required greater engagement with directorates to ensure contracts were managed effectively.
• For those Members who were newly appointed to the Committee, it was discussed that a training session on the different technical areas and terms dealt with by the Committee would be beneficial to aid understanding.

ACTION: Ms M Gibb / Mr D Skinner / Mr L Ashton to arrange session open to all Members of the Committee.

RESOLVED:

That the report and work of the Strategic Procurement Team be noted.