EU rules are obstructing councils from saving money

The cost of our EU membership in terms of our basic membership sub is £14 billion a year.  However, the true cost, including the cost of complying with all the red tape, is much higher. Both our contribution to the EU budget and the burden of regulation are going up. One example of the hidden cost is the way EU procurement rules thwart efforts by local councils to get value for money. The Local Government Association is not the most obvious Eurosceptic. Yet even it is becoming exasperated. This is a straw in the wind. The LGA's instinct will have been to schmooze with the EU, not to pick a fight.

"EU rules choking off councils' money saving efforts," is the headline of the LGA press release.

It reports:

Tortuous EU procurement rules, which are choking off opportunities to save taxpayers' money and promote local growth, are in danger of becoming even more convoluted and costly, council leaders warn today.

The Local Government Association, which has produced a Procurement Pledge which commits local and central government to work more closely on these issues, is concerned that moves are afoot which could make it virtually impossible for councils to give preference to local suppliers, and will force those wishing to pool services with neighbouring local authorities into an unnecessarily lengthy and costly EU-wide tendering process.

The LGA is concerned that instead of addressing the problems inherent in the current system an up-coming revision of procurement regulations is in danger of making them worse. It is calling on the Government to go into battle for the UK and ensure the re-write of the European directives delivers for British council taxpayers.

Small firms demand a fair chance on council procurement

Procurement spending by local authorities in the UK comes to £88 billion a year. The Federation of Small Businesses have long complained that the process is so cumbersome that it unfairly favours a small number of big contractors. They argue that by squeezing out small firms, Council Taxpayers lose out.

The FSB has carried out a survey which polled all local councils to see how and where they spend their money. A third of councils don't record the location of the firms they are spneding money with. Half don't know the size of the businesses they deal with. The average council's procurement spending is £185 million. If small firms aren't getting any contracts, then councils really ought to know about it.

The FSB offers these proposals:

Bromley and Lewisham save £2 million with joint ICT support

In what is a first for London, Bromley and Lewisham Councils have joined forces to purchase their ICT support services from a single provider, resulting in significant combined annual savings of £2m. Of course while Bromley is Conservative, Lewisham is Labour.

There will be separate contracts with both Councils but with a shared specification and performance regime that will result in a standard set of requirements.

Annual savings to Lewisham will be £1.5m which represents a 40 per cent budget reduction, and to Bromley £500,000 a year, amounting to a 25 per cent saving.

The contracts have been awarded to SunGard Public Sector Ltd who will provide support for the computer and telephony systems used by staff across both councils.

The bureaucrats' guide to procurement

Jon Harvey offers some top tips for bureaucrats anxious to make the process as obstructive as possible. These are real examples from the purchase of leadership and organisational development consultancy

1. Make sure that the PQQ is at least 65 pages long with 367 separate items of information to gather. It is well known that the best consultants in this arena thoroughly enjoy and indeed have bucketfuls of time to answer numerous questions about their own policies on health & safety, quality, complaints handling, business continuity and hand washing protocols (even though many of them work in small or single person firms).

2. Be sure to embed the description of the requirement somewhere towards the middle of the specification document as this helps ensure the consultant will read all 188 items about the terms and conditions of the contract. Whatever you do, label the requirement in some way that means it is not easily found. You want people to dig for what you want them to do for you.

3. Take care to include at least two, if not three different deadline dates as this helps the consultant keep alert. A single clear deadline date has been shown to produce only poor quality tender documents.

4. Learn to use the ‘cut and paste’ function of your word processor. It is an invaluable tool when compiling PQQs since it then becomes remarkably easy to produce document paragraph numbering arrangements that only the very best consultants can hope to fathom.