The context for Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) has never been more demanding as you respond to address safety concerns in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster against a backdrop of competing challenges including a new economic environment, increased regulatory pressures, the challenges of the green agenda and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this context landlords are working hard to support and strengthen social housing with stretched resources.
As part of your mission to decarbonise social housing and contribute to the UK’s ambition to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, you will be engaged in a review of all aspects of your business model from the fabric of buildings to the materials used in construction and repair, heating, lighting and ventilation systems, tenant education, electrification of vehicle fleet, and the entire chain of custody that governs your carbon footprint. The drive to achieve the Government’s target to build 300,000 new homes by 2025 is made more challenging by the imperative for sustainable properties.
One of the core strategic drivers of success underpinning your goals is the way in which you procure resources and services to maximise budgets, save time, and deliver social value. Already under the spotlight, the government’s green paper ‘Transforming Public Procurement’ sets out the direction of travel for a wholesale review that promises to reduce red tape at the heart of the 2015 Public Contract Regulations bringing more flexible and competitive alternatives to the so-called ‘light touch regime’.
In the meantime, you need to consider the best ways to operate within the current system, as you work to deliver your immediate objectives, providing high quality housing for your tenants, reducing void property turnaround times, fulfilling emergency repairs, meeting servicing commitments, reducing rent arrears, and continuing to deliver against your social value objectives.
In fact, you can already make significant gains by addressing how you manage your procurement. One of the best ways to introduce simplicity and speed within the procurement process is by accessing framework agreements. In this series of blogs, we explore how landlords can access some of the benefits promised for the future in the green paper as soon as their next contract becomes ready for renewal.
Procurement decisions should always be made within the wider strategic context of your organisational objectives. Purchasing is a professional skill not an admin function and so you should call on expert advice. The use of public funds needs to meet the highest standards of probity and transparency and demonstrate that decisions have been made based on best value.
Conducting full formal tender processes is time-consuming and can take 6-12 months or longer. Open tenders provide a wide field of choice but are you prepared to process significant numbers of bids? Restricted tenders may sound like a more streamlined option, but they are still open to all bidders even if they do include an option to narrow the field in Stage 2. Competitive dialogue processes, sometimes including negotiation, are usually only required for highly complex projects, and innovation partnerships may be used to secure contracts for new products not yet on the market. ‘Commonly used items’ can be procured via an electronic Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS). However, the downside to this option is that suppliers can be added to a DPS at any time meaning that all potential bidders need to be considered creating a time-consuming additional admin burden.
An interesting and attractive alternative, already used by hundreds of RSLs, is the procurement of products and services using framework agreements. There are still those amongst the UK’s 1,500 housing associations who may be hesitant about accessing this type of agreement, perhaps defaulting to full tender processes in the belief that this is the only way to ensure compliance with procurement law. In fact, framework agreements are fully compliant options that provide flexible access to the products and services on which you most rely with a fast-track route to getting contracts in place.
In our following blogs we will explore how framework agreements can be particularly advantageous for RSLs and how to go about engaging with them.