Scottish Government procurement: annual report 2020 to 2021

4. Contracting activity and how our procurement activity contributes to sustainable and inclusive economic growth

4.1 Summary of Regulated Procurements Completed Between April 2020 and March 2021

Our contracts continue to deliver a wide range of economic, social and environmental benefits which are good for businesses and their employees, good for society, and good for places and communities.

Through the reporting period, we managed 652 live contracts (across all types of contracting activity) worth nearly £4.7 billion throughout their lifetimes, with Scottish public sector bodies spending just over £1 billion on goods and services through our National and Central Government sectoral framework contracts during the period. We also awarded 409 new contracts regulated by the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 with a total value of over £440 million.

Fair Work criteria are a standard consideration for our procurements and so our contracts continue to make a positive contribution to achieving good and sustainable employment for people working on public contracts. 92% of our current suppliers have committed to paying at least the real Living Wage.

During the reporting period our national collaborative frameworks and contracts, and our core Scottish Government contracts collectively generated savings of £196.5 million for Scottish public bodies.

Details of our contract awards are available on the Public Contracts Scotland website. Our website contains more information on our current collaborative agreements.

Spend Summary

The table below shows spend on collaborative frameworks (established by Scottish Ministers, but available to all Scottish public sector bodies) and contracts used by core Scottish Government organisations.

While not included in figures elsewhere in this report, we also awarded 78 regulated contracts worth a total of £13.28 million on behalf of other public bodies; 21% of these contracts were awarded to SMEs.

These contracts were placed on behalf of other central government bodies separate to the Scottish Government and, if applicable, will be reported in the respective organisations' Annual Procurement Report.

4.2. Review of whether our procurements kept to our Procurement Strategy published on 29 March 2018

Our Procurement Strategy sets out how we plan to carry our regulated procurement exercises. This report reflects on whether those procurements complied with that strategy during the period April 2020 to March 2021.

As was the case last year, during that period, all of the regulated contracts have been awarded in a way which meets the policies and principles set out in the strategy, and throughout this report we explain how this has been achieved.

We continue to recognise the importance of those responsible for procurement having an appropriate level of delegated authority. Key to this is ensuring that those involved in awarding and managing contracts have the professional skills, knowledge, qualifications and experience to do so and that we continue to invest in their skills and capability development through our Procurement Competency Framework. We use the framework, which was updated in the summer of 2020, to guide our annual learning needs and the dedicated learning programme delivered in response to them. By investing in our professional capability we ensured that our people were able to meet both current and emerging challenges in the reporting period, and that continuous professional development was at the very heart of our approach.

Our scheme of "delegated purchasing authority", means that no member of staff is authorised to enter into a contract on behalf of Scottish Ministers without written delegated authority to do so from our Director of Procurement. That delegated authority is only given to those who can demonstrate they possess the appropriate skills, competencies and knowledge of our procurement policies and of legal obligations. We continue to provide support and training to the community of delegated purchasing officers.

4.3. Summary of regulated procurements in the next two financial years.

In the next two years we anticipate starting around 220 procurements worth a total of around £4.2 billion across our contracting scope:

• Over 170 contracts will be awarded for the sole use of the Scottish Government, with an approximate value of £1.6 billion.
• 19 contracts worth around £115 million will be awarded in relation to the specific services required to support the additional powers devolved to the Scottish Government by the Scotland Act 2016.
• 33 national collaborative contracts/ frameworks will be awarded on behalf of Scottish public bodies, with an approximate value of £2.6 billion.

A full list of known regulated procurements is in Annex A.