Corporate Procurement Unit

What Is Procurement?

Procurement is the section within the Finance Service that has overall responsibility for procurement policy and strategy within the Council.

We have a number of functions:

Policy, Standards and Guidance
Inter-Service/Procurement Service Projects
Procurement Efficiency and Improvement
Interface with Suppliers
Interface and Collaboration with Other Public Organisations
Sustainable Procurement

The Highland Council's Procurement Strategy 2011-2015 and a copy of our Contract Standing Orders can be found in the Current Documents section on this screen.

A list of Current Council Contracts and a link to our Contract Opportunities can also be found on the right-hand side of this screen.

Policy, Standards and Guidance

Highland Council Policy and Standards on Procurement are set out in the Council’s Contract Standing Orders. These are available in the Current Documents section on the right of the screen. The orders themselves won’t tell you exactly how you must carry out any exercise you run to meet your needs for goods, works or services. The orders form a high level document which outlines the fundamental issues and rules we need to follow so that all our procurement activity will be open, fair, and accountable, and will ensure that the Council secures best value in its approach to procurement.

Inter-Service Procurement Projects

Most of the Council’s requirements for goods and services cut across Service boundaries, and where they do, Procurement has the responsibility of co-ordinating them. Each requirement, and eventually the Contract that arises out of it, has a lead Service “owner” who will manage the Contract, and this is based on which Service has the majority of the spending or the greatest technical knowledge of the contract area. As such you can always be sure that all technical aspects have been well covered in the specification and the Council is obtaining the best value for its money by co-ordinating all of its procurement activities for each requirement.

Procurement Efficiency and Improvement

During 2005 the Scottish executive is carrying out a review of all procurement activities in Scottish Local Authorities. A base line study carried out in 2004 showed that we have an unusually high level of contracted spending, so we are ahead of the field in that sense, but we still need to make significant savings through procurement over the next few years. We will do this by:-

Changing our approach to procurement
Improving our contractual arrangements
Improving the way we actually buy what we buy on a day to day basis
Collaboration with others
Broadening our consideration of what we “make” and what we buy

Interface with Suppliers

We are expected under the new Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act to become more open fair and accountable in all that we do, and this includes commercial activities. As the unit which gathers together all information on the Council’s contracts, Procurement needs to ensure that the interfaces between the Council and suppliers are as transparent as possible. In order to do this, we publish our lists of current contracts and tendering plans on the Council’s public website. We also work with partners such as the European Information Centre and Highlands and Islands Enterprise to ensure that all suppliers are given equal opportunity to bid for and participate in Council business. See external links section.

Interface and Collaboration with Other Organisations

As well as working with partner organisations to ensure transparency and equality, we also work with partners both within the Wellbeing Alliance and more widely in other Councils and public sector bodies on requirements that cut across different groups of organisations. Examples are contracts for electricity and mains gas which we share with the Police; car hire which we are developing with HIE and the Fire Brigade; and building maintenance materials which we are developing with Moray Council and SNH. Since each Service has its own specialisms and Procurement takes the lead in taking cross service procurement forward, it also makes sense for Procurement to take the lead in organising inter-agency procurement.

Sustainable Procurement

The Highland Council is committed to implementing the requirements of both environmental and socio-economic sustainability in all of its procurement activities, and to working with all sectors of the business community in order to achieve this.

The Council’s Sustainable Procurement Action Plan is here