Procurement Strategies and Notifying Scottish Ministers

In the latest Scottish Procurement Policy Note SPPN 11/2016, the Scottish Government has detailed how a contracting authority should notify Scottish Ministers of the publication of its organisational procurement strategy.

The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 requires a contracting authority which expects to have “significant procurement expenditure” in the next financial year to prepare a procurement strategy setting out how the authority intends to carry out regulated procurements for the forthcoming year. A contracting authority has “significant procurement expenditure” in a year if the sum of the estimated values of the contracts to which its regulated procurements in that year relate is equal to or greater than £5,000,000.

The Act provides that a contracting authority can publish its strategy in such a manner as it considers appropriate, but this must include publication online. On publishing a strategy, a contracting authority must notify the Scottish Ministers. SPPN 11/2016 has confirmed that this notification must be made by email to ProcurementStrategies@gov.scot, with a copy of the strategy attached or a link to the strategy provided.

Contracting authorities are required to prepare and publish their first procurement strategies by 31 December 2016. The first procurement strategy must cover the remainder of the 2016/17 financial year and the full 2017/18 financial year. In terms of form and content, a procurement strategy must address the matters listed in Section 15(5) of the Act. Further guidance on content can be found in theStatutory Guidance under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014.