Procurement rules and regulations

See the council’s Financial regulations

Procurement Act 2023

Public procurement law changed on 24 February 2025 with the introduction of the Procurement Act 2023. If you are a supplier who already works with us or are interested in doing so, then you should assess how these changes impact you.

Gov.UK have published guidance, including short videos, to provide an overview and get you started. Suppliers: How to register your organisation and first administrator on Find a Tender in three easy steps

Registration is especially important if you wish to find and bid for high value contracts in the public sector

Procurement and Contract Management Strategy

Our procurement and contract management strategy sets out our plan to support the corporate strategy for the period 2024 to 2028.

This Strategy was approved by Cabinet on 4 September 2024

Social value

Social value is about maximising the impact of public expenditure to leverage economic, social and environmental benefits.

Procurement rules permit us to take account of bidders’ social value commitments that add value to our local area.

If you're thinking about bidding for a council contract, please read the Invitation to Tender/Request for Quotation documents carefully and look out for award criteria geared around strong tangible social value benefits.

We plan to share our approach here shortly once it is approved.

Carbon reduction and sustainable procurement

The council declared a 'Climate Emergency' on 16 July 2019.

We are drawing up plans for our operations to become carbon neutral by 2030. We are also looking at how early the rest of the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area can become carbon neutral, ahead of the national target of 2050. To become carbon neutral, our net carbon output needs to be zero. Our suppliers have an important role to play in helping us get there – look out for social value criteria in procurements. These may be geared to reduce your carbon impact as a result of winning our contract.

We recommend you familiarise yourself with Government Buying Standards which we have adopted to leverage sustainability into our requirements wherever relevant.

Our eProcurement system (ProContract)

We use a system called ProContract to invite bids.

You'll need to register to receive notifications and express interest in our contract opportunities. There's no charge for registering or bidding – but to bid you must have an account registered on the system.

If you require any technical assistance please contact ProContractSuppliers@proactis.com

Terms and conditions

Our terms and conditions apply to anything ordered by the council unless it has expressly agreed otherwise in writing, or the order is for something covered by an existing written contract.

Data Transparency

Procurement rules and regulations require that we operate transparently. Transparency benefits everyone. Our data related to our advertised opportunities, awarded contracts and spend can be accessed via the following sources:

Find a Tender

When we openly advertise our contract opportunities you will find them on the UK site: Find a Tender.

Many of the opportunities on this site are “above threshold” meaning:

• supplies or services contract opportunities exceeding £214,904* whole life contract value
• works contract opportunities exceeding £5,372,609* whole life contract value
• light touch regime for services contract opportunities exceeding £663,540* whole life contract value

*values inclusive of VAT.

Contract Register

Search our Contracts Register to view records of our awarded (live) contracts, frameworks, concessions, dynamic purchasing systems Contracts register

Payments to suppliers

Review our monthly reports listing our payments to external bodies and suppliers over £0 (excluding VAT) Payments to suppliers

Local Government Transparency Code

Download the Local government transparency code 2015 - GOV.UK

Public Procurement Review Service: tackling poor procurement practice

Public Procurement Review Service (PPRS) is an anonymous service run by Cabinet Office allowing businesses to raise concerns and highlight the barriers they encounter when bidding for, or working on, public sector contracts.

The Public Review Service works with councils and other public sector organisations to resolve concerns. Before reporting an issue or concern to the Public Review Service, please email procurement@bcpcouncil.gov.uk so that we have an opportunity to resolve the issue.

How to contact us

You can contact us by either:

• email at procurement@bcpcouncil.gov.uk
• post at
  Procurement and Contract Management Service
  Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council
  Bournemouth, BH2 6DY