The Head of Financial Services has submitted a report to seek approval to a two year Procurement Strategy for the Council.

Recommendation: That Cabinet resolves to:

1.    Approve the procurement strategy 2020-2022

The Head of Financial Services had submitted a report seeking approval for a two year Procurement Strategy for the Council.

Councillor Turner, Cabinet Member for Finance and Asset Management, introduced the report and explained how the procurement strategy supported the Council’s core values and economic development strategy. He thanked the officers involved in its production.

Cabinet resolved to:

Approve the procurement strategy 2020-2022.

On 09 September the Cabinet will consider a report on the Council’s Procurement Strategy. The Panel is asked to consider the report, making any recommendations to Cabinet as it sees fit.

Annette Osborne, Procurement Manager, will be available to present the report.

NB The report for this item will be issued as a supplement.

The Procurement Manager introduced the Procurement Strategy 2020-22 which would be recommended to Cabinet for approval, having been through multiple iterations. The Strategy supported the Council’s aim of fostering an inclusive economy. The Council would seek a commitment from suppliers that extended to sub-contractors where appropriate, to pay their employees at least the Oxford Living Wage for work undertaken within Oxford or otherwise the Living Wage Foundation rate.

The Panel explored the extent to which the Council’s wholly owned companies had bought in to the Procurement Strategy. The Head of Financial Services explained that the Strategy had been shared with both the Housing Group and Oxford Direct Services (ODS) companies, which had not proposed any substantive amendments. While both groups of companies were working on their own separate procurement strategies they were expected to align with the broad principles of the Council’s strategy, specifically around delivering social value. It was noted that certain aspects of the Strategy may not fit well with ODS due to its commercial direction.

The Panel questioned whether the intention was to employ a single procurement manager across the Council and its companies. The Procurement Manager was employed by ODS and had also been working in part for the Council under a joint arrangement however ODS had signalled its intention to end that arrangement, so consideration would need to be given to what happened next.

The Panel asked how the Council would assess a company that was delivering social value outside of the City. The Procurement Manager said that the Council had to be transparent and fair to all potential suppliers in order to minimise the risk of challenge and could not be biased against good employers based elsewhere. The Council could target local social value in how it asked questions, where this was justifiable, and could in some cases apply some weighting based on mileage distance e.g. how far a prospective waste supplier would be travelling to a waste transfer station.

In discussion the Panel also noted:

·         Alternatives to the conventional delivery of goods and services such as digital solutions would generally be explored pre-procurement when the Council engaged with industry to inform specifications.

·         The Panel would see the percentage of ODS spend within the city in future performance reports. This data would be split out from the Council’s own figure, as previously requested by Scrutiny.

·         That given that Oxford had been a Fairtrade City for many years it seemed odd that the Town Hall caterers were only now developing Fairtrade procurement in their supply chain. The Procurement Manager offered to look into this point.

The Panel resolved to note and support the Procurement Strategy 2020-22 and thanked officers for their work in producing a high quality Strategy document.