WHAT IS “SPECULATIVE” ABOUT PUBLIC FRAMEWORK AGREEMENTS?

The Scottish Government has decided that organisations offering pre-tendered frameworks to public bodies are speculators – persons who make conjectures without knowing the facts or who risk losses for the possibility of considerable gains.

In their recent Scottish Procurement Policy Note SPPN 3/2017, they stated that they were aware of a number of organisations claiming to offer legally-compliant framework agreements to Scottish contracting authorities.  In some cases it appears to be clear to them that these framework agreements have been awarded without prior consultation with those authorities and may have been established without any real understanding of the authorities’ actual requirements.  For the purposes of the SPPN they refer to these as ‘speculative framework agreements’.

It must be assumed that whereas “in some cases” no prior consultation has taken place, it follows that “in some cases” prior consultation has indeed taken place.  It is galling, therefore, that the Scottish Government has decided to scare authorities into the belief that all pre-tendered frameworks are bad, even where the framework provider has tried extremely hard to establish likely requirements, scope and estimated values.  Market intelligence, collaborative alliances of public bodies, encouraging public bodies to open up about their requirements and budget spend are all useful tools in getting the facts that speculators may not care about.

However, any professional who works with public bodies is fully aware of how difficult it is to obtain forecasts of expenditure.  That is the nature of public bodies, where political nervousness, budgetary constraints, shifting funding patterns and short-term expediency all combine to thwart the provision of accurate, believable forecasts for the coming year, let alone for the term of a four year framework.

Any professional whose purpose and mission it is to assist public bodies in procuring contracts that provide good value for money for what the bodies are likely to require and provide better homes and communities will feel aggrieved that, through no want of trying, he or she has been lumped into the nasty category of profiteer.

What is even worse is that the Scottish Government now appears to have encouraged the Welsh Assembly to think the same way.

It is well known that the Localism Act has prompted many regional areas of the United Kingdom to strive to improve local businesses by attempting to legally discriminate against ‘outsiders’.  However, an attack on competent framework providers who strive to generate local provision for local demand is likely to backfire.  When the demand occurs there will be no means to satisfy it.