CCPS urges European Commission to improve procurement rules
Posted on Thursday 14 April 2011
CCPS is urging the European Commission to refine and improve EU public procurement policy, expressing the strong view that current arrangements are not fit for purpose in relation to contracts for social care services.
In its response to a Commission Green Paper on procurement, issued for consultation earlier this year, CCPS highlights providers' experiences of competitive tendering in social care and points out that "research clearly demonstrates that the application of EU procurement policy to social services has impacted negatively both on the social services workforce and on service quality, chiefly because quality in social services is not amenable to evaluation or scoring by public authorities as a paper exercise."
The CCPS submission addresses a range of areas for consultation, including the proposal that the distinction between Part A and Part B services be removed; the potential for authorities to give much more consideration to a potential provider's track record and past performance; and whether authorities should be able to set requirements in areas other than those directly related to the contract, for example workforce conditions.
CCPS ends its submission by emphasising that in its view, "social services are entirely distinct from other types of public contract...we feel very strongly that they should be subject to a discrete set of rules that recognise their specific features and do not treat disabled and other vulnerable citizens in effect as ‘commodities’ whose support can be tendered on the open market in a similar way to office furniture, refuse collection or any number of other public contract opportunities."
The full CCPS submission can be viewed here; the Green Paper and consultation document can be accessed at this link: http://ec.europa.eu/news/business/110128_en.htm.