|
Feel free to circulate this email to your colleagues and suggest that they sign up to receive it themselves. Create or manage your LGA bulletin subscriptions or read previous editions of this bulletin.
Buying for Schools
Buying for Schools is a free and impartial procurement service for people who buy goods and services for schools and multi-academy trusts.
Their dedicated team of procurement specialists can offer:
- offer advice and guidance to make sure you’re buying compliantly at any point, even if your procurement process is already in progress.
- review your documents to make sure they're complete and compliant. This includes advice on specification documents, tender documents and evaluation criteria
- support you on choosing or using a framework agreement for your procurement
- advise when you need to seek legal advice.
Their specialists may also offer to help run more complex or high value procurements. Use this service if you’re a state-funded school in England and need free help with your school procurement. Please pass this on to colleagues at schools involved in the procurement process, however big or small.
Local Partnerships - Programme Management Office (PMO) guide
Local Partnerships have produced a Programme Management Office (PMO) guide for local authorities interested in establishing a programme management office or review their project management arrangements.
The guidance has been informed by local authorities who operate a PMO and includes a Project Threshold tool to support in assessing the scale of the project in terms of finance, risk and complexity. This is aimed at helping evaluating the level of management, assurance and support needed for a project.
Procurement best practice – how to unlock efficiency and consistency through using playbooks – Procurement Essentials
Playbooks set out how departments should approach procurement and programmes of activity, and their application is assured through Cabinet Office controls. They also outline the Government’s expectations for how contracting authorities and suppliers should engage with each other.
Playbooks are specifically designed to demystify procurement processes, promote consistency, and ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks. The Procurement Essentials gives an overview of the current playbooks on offer. You can now find all of our Procurement Essentials articles in one place.
Provider Selection Regime – new Knowledge Drop dates
The Provider Selection Regime (PSR) came into effect on 1 January 2024. New Knowledge drop dates have been announced throughout January and February.
The LGA Innovation Zone 2024
The Innovation Zone is a vibrant and creative space within the LGA Conference and hosts a variety of sessions and panel discussions for councils to showcase new ideas and solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing local government. This is a hugely popular part of the LGA Conference and provides an excellent opportunity for councils to showcase their innovative ideas and achievements and it would fantastic to have a procurement related project at the heart of Conference this year. The deadline for applications is Monday 5 February.
Housing resources to support local government
Homes England launched two new resources to support local government and other organisations involved in homebuilding and regeneration.
The Capacity Analysis Tool can help to identify the skills and capacity within a user’s organisation in relation to housing delivery and regeneration, and signpost actions to help improve this capacity.
The New Homes fact sheets have been designed to support local government in conversations with local communities and consists of a series of fact sheets with key information and figures on different areas of home building and regeneration. If you have any questions, please contact: cce@homesengland.gov.uk.
The big fat public sector procurement quiz of the year
Love public sector procurement? Start your year right with the biggest public sector procurement quiz of the year. Join for 30 minutes of light-hearted fun (or intense competition!) at 12:30pm 18 January. Free to enter and charity donation for the winner on the day.
Social Value: Building it into your organisation
Tuesday, 16 January 2024, 1:00pm - 5:00pm | Virtual Event
LGA housing retrofit and decarbonisation virtual event
Thursday, 18 January 2024, 10.00am - 11.30am
The big fat public sector procurement quiz of the year
Thursday, 18 January 2024, 12:30pm – 1:00pm
The Procurement Act Expo
Tuesday, 12 March 2024 | In person conference
LGA Transformation Conference (Hybrid event)
Tuesday, 26 March 2024, 10.30am - 2.30pm | 18 Smith Square, Westminster, London and Online
first is the LGA's membership magazine, distributed to around 16,700 councillors and local authority chief executives in England and Wales. Councillors and officers can sign up for the first e-bulletin using their council email addresses and/or access first online to browse LGA news stories, features, good practice case studies and comment pieces, including those from past issues.
For editorial inquiries, please email karen.thornton@local.gov.uk. For advertising, contact Polena Boutwood, Media Sales Executive at polena.boutwood@cplone.co.uk or on 01223 378047.
|
