What drives local government procurement improvement?

I'm sure many of you have been eagerly awaiting the evidence sessions on local government procurement to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. On Monday the Committee  had its first session of oral evidence which is now published.

I had previously highlighted what I felt may be worth exploring, but it doesn't really look as if either the  Committee or LGA have spent anytime learning from history and would rather listen to some suspect assertions.

A good starting point was the Committee trying to establish what drives procurement improvement? Sadly, the LGA spokesperson had to have that question broken down into bite-sized chunks before the Committee came to his rescue. Then we heard, what I consider to be absolute nonsense, that the electorate are driving change through the ballot box. Thankfully the Committee had enough sense to question that assertion too. Having interviewed hundreds of local government procurement stakeholders this was the first time I have ever heard anyone suggest there is something in a manifesto about local government procurement. It's all about campaigns and the X factor in one council it seems.

We heard that the LGA have been working on a national procurement strategy since 2006 - why so little progress? Well perhaps, and I quote, "I am not sure a national framework is terribly helpful". We may be in a better position to judge whether a national procurement strategy would be helpful if they considered the evidence of the impact of the first NPS - there were annual impact assessments completed, why weren't they drawn upon? There were also some academic papers and from memory a ODPM financed impact assessment.

Local government procurement - what goes around comes around

How many of you recall the 2001 Byatt Review of local government procurement  or the subsequent 2003 National Procurement Strategy for local government. The impact assessments suggested they were effective. Of course I'm biased - I spend many years within IDeA supporting the NPS.

Now we find the Communities and Local Government Select Committee of the House of Commons have issued a call for submission of evidence on the effectiveness of Local Government Procurement.  The areas they hope to explore have a touch of deja vu echoing Byatt and the NPS which were a decade ago, yet I honestly wonder if those involved in the inquiry are aware of those antecedents.

I find it amazing that having dismantled almost the whole local government procurement support structure someone has now decided to find out what's going on. But I suppose if you think of the timescales involved the outputs could be timely for a new government.

If the Committee mean business they need to take a wider perspective, be forensic and ask:

1. What were the lessons learnt from the implementation of the NPS?
2. What was achieved through the NPS? (The impact assessment should be used as evidence)
3. What happened to the library of local government procurement indicators, procurement skills programme, the Passport2Procurement eLearning tool, the sustainable procurement guidance, gateway reviews, Fitness Checks?
4. Has local government procurement gone backwards since the implementation of the NPS?
5. What was the impact (costs and benefits) of dismantling the procurement support provided by the IDeA, 4Ps and RCEs?
6. What was the impact of the Small Business Friendly Concordat?
7. Why is it that local government has been able to collaborate on purchasing since 1957 and other parts of the public sector find it so difficult?
8. Where is local government now positioned against the milestones of the NPS?
9. What were the lessons learnt from high profile failures, for example Wiral and Lancashire major service contracts, 
10. Why has central government appeared to learn so little from local government procurement?
11. What does world best of bred local government procurement look like?

The Inquiry provides a wonderful opportunity to learn and improve the delivery of public services - let's hope the Committee hear and don't bury their heads in the sand.

Category management flushed out

They've delivered public service since 1852, yet Sunday, Monday, and now Tuesday publicly owned toilets have managed to feature in national newspapers - yes, I have blogged the toliets. Today it was the turn of Billericay Town Council (covered in The Times hard copy) which it has been claimed at £20k a year, is "the most expensive toilet in the country". Other Billericay numbers are 20p charge for users for a visit, a 15 year lease and a £125k contract break charge. 

Now the claim of being "the most expensive toilet in the country" would surely be very easy to verify and in the process could potentially demonstrate vfm and a collaborative approach by councils to benchmarking, collaborative negotiating, and collaborative buying.

So what I suggest is something very simple, a national audit of the nations contracts for 'superloos'. Include: the core details of the service provided, date started, length of contract, options for renewal, expiry date, break clauses and penalties for early termination, cost of consumables and charge to users. Such a simple audit would provide a really simple tool for introducing a category management approach to 'superloos'. Let some CX make a name for themselves as 'superloo procurement lead'. Let them baseline the costs and introduce a category management approach. Leading negotiations with the comparatively small number of providers shouldn't bring a flush.

Let's face it, if the LGA can't get a handle on this, are their aspirations for a new national procurement strategy with category leads really achievable?  Roll up, roll up, the cost of spending a penny could drop!