Issue - meetings

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Enabling presented the Approvals to Spend report for the Executive Committee’s consideration.

Members were informed that the report detailed the key implications of the new Procurement Bill, which needed to be enacted by 1^st April 2024.  The Bill introduced a requirement for greater transparency in terms of how Councils undertook their business.  The Bill would reform the UK’s public procurement regime, and aimed to make it quicker, simpler, more transparent and better able to meet the UK’s needs while remaining compliant with international obligations.  The legislation would introduce a new regime that was based on value for money, competition and objective criteria in decision-making.  The legislation required Councils to more effectively open up public procurement to new entrants such as small businesses and social enterprises so that they could compete for and win more public contracts.     

The Committee was assured that, whist this might appear daunting, the recent work that the Council had already done to put measures in place meant that the majority of the requirements under the new legislation were already being addressed with a few changes required for transparency purposes.  Measures already in place included:

·        The No Compliance No Order procurement regime which had been implemented on the TechOne system on the 1^st April 2023. With this, an order could not be raised unless it was linked to a contract or an identifiable procurement route.

·        All new suppliers had to be approved by the procurement and payments teams. 

·        Monthly spending of over £500 was already published on the Council’s website.

·        The Council had an European Professional Card (EPC) card system for small expenditure.

·        The authority’s contracts register was available to Officers, Members and the public to view.

·        The Procurement team was available for monthly meetings with Heads of Service and this ensured the procurement team had knowledge of what service departments were procuring and that they could check that there was compliance with the No Compliance No Order regime.

·        Procurement training was provided to teams on request.

·        Monthly accounts payable training was being delivered.

·        There was a dedicated Procurement team page on the Council’s website.

Part 5 of the Council’s Constitution detailed the Officer Scheme of Delegations.  This scheme outlined the decisions that had been delegated to Officers by the Executive Committee and Council. The Council’s Constitution clarified that key decisions with signficant financial implications for the authority were Executive level decisions with a combined financial spend (either as a single item or for the length of the contract) of £50,000 or more.  This included revenue, capital and Section 106 allocations.

There was a legal requirement for the Council to give notice of forthcoming key decisions and the authority did this by publishing items on the Executive Committee’s Work Programme.  Decisions due to be taken by the Executive Committee were actioned through a report presented for consideration at a meeting of the Committee.  Decisions that were delegated to Officers were actioned via an Officer Decision Notice.

The Council’s Procurement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19