Providers' faith in procurement hits rock bottom as CEC Tender is dropped
Posted on Thursday 04 February 2010
The City of Edinburgh Council Care and Support tender is once more under focus following the production of a report from Deloitte, the news that the Council's Chief Executive has recommended that no contracts will be awarded, and that any further plans to continue the procurement process have finally been abandoned.
CCPS was concerned to note the Chief Executive's quote from the Deloitte report that "the execution [of the tender] was not as sufficiently meticulous or thorough as might have been expected". Despite the major reservations of many CCPS members about the suitability of some competitive tendering methods in care and support - mainly relating to matters of principle - many providers had no alternative in this case than to enter the tender process, if they wished to continue providing support to individuals and families, with whom some providers have worked for more than 20 years.
To learn now that the process was flawed, was not handled either meticulously or thoroughly, and appears to have been subject to major issues of poor practice, will no doubt cause some care providers to question their faith in procurement as a whole, and possibly reject consideration of involvement in any future competitive tendering exercises, which could have major ramifications for similar exercises throughout Scotland.
Possibly in the light of this concern, the City of Edinburgh Council has written specifically to CCPS and its members, to ask for their engagement in discussions relating to the future Commissioning Strategy and the way forward generally. CCPS is also represented on the Public Procurement Advisory Group, which aims to drive through procurement reform for the public sector in Scotland, and will be making sure that this issue will be high on the agenda of their future discussions and scrutiny.
For more background information on this issue, you can read an earlier news story about this Tender, as well as links to CCPS Briefings contained in our Commissioning, Tendering and Procurement pages