Our contracting process
We spend approximately £17million a year buying goods and services including:
- waste collection vehicles, equipment and services
- construction services, housing related repairs and building maintenance
- professional consultancy services
- office services, for example stationery, IT equipment and cleaning
Contracting opportunities
Contracts that we are currently tendering for can be found online. If you are interested in opportunities to sell please visit the resources below:
- LGSS Procurement Portal - to view tender opportunities worth over £25,000
- Contracts Finder - to view tender opportunities above £25,000 and below the World Trade Organisation Threshold of £200,000 Supplies/Services
- Find a Tender Service - tender opportunities for goods and services above the World Trade Organisation Thresholds of £200,000
- ESPO
- Crown Commercial Service
To hear about upcoming tender opportunities, procurement workshops and other information and advice, please sign up to our business newsletter.
For more information on supplier expenditure please visit our contracts and finance webpage.
How we buy goods and services
We purchase based on value for money, simplicity and ease of process. We buy goods and services via:
- Framework contracts - contracts that have been pre-tendered by organisations, so reducing the time it takes to instruct you to carry out work. If you are awarded a framework contract, we are able to pass work to you without asking you to tender every time. These can cover a wide range of goods and services used in the public sector.
- Catalogues - we purchases from ESPO's catalogue of commonly used goods.
- Partner authorities - where possible we try to align requirements and specifications with our partner authorities (Huntingdonshire District Council and Cambridge City Council).
- Approved lists - these are only used in specific categories where the work required to go through the full procurement process would be greater than creating and administering the list
- Direct to market - the value of the procurement determines the process:
- contracts up to £5,000: a minimum of one quote is required.
- contracts between £5,000 and £25,000: a minimum of 3 quotes are required.
- contracts between £25,000 and the OJEU Procurement thresholds: contracts are let via our formal tender process and advertised on the LGSS Procurement Portal and Contracts Finder.
- contracts over the OJEU threshold: contracts comply with the EU procurement regime and advertised on the European Tenders Electronic Daily website.
How to bid
We provide the following bidding instructions when we issue an Invitation to Quote or an Invitation to Tender.
Terms and conditions
We use the following terms and conditions when we purchase goods, services and/or works:
- Terms and conditions of standard services
- Standard terms and conditions for the purchase of goods [PDF, 0.5MB]
- Standard terms and conditions for the purchase of services [PDF, 0.5MB]
- Standard terms and conditions for the purchase of lower value goods, services and works
For various contracts these standard terms and conditions may be amended by specific terms and conditions that relate to that particular contract.