Cllr Taylor at today's conference

Buying power can help the environment and the tax payer

Today I had the very great honour of opening Staffordshire's third annual Procurement Conference.

The conference brought together public sector organisations from around the West Midlands, including councils, police and fire services and the NHS.

The reason "procurement" is so important is that we are talking about staggering sums of public money. To put this into context, Staffordshire County Council alone spends £380 million every year with external suppliers, and this includes over £135 million spent with Staffordshire firms.

We aim to share ideas about how to use our massive collective buying-power to achieve exceptional value-for-money for the tax payer and help safeguard the environment.

To put this into context, Staffordshire County Council alone spends £380 million every year with external suppliers. We spend on a vast range of products as diverse as specialist care for people with disabilities, to road repair materials and paper-clips.

All public sector organisations have a duty to spend money wisely and responsibly. We believe that as an organisation we have made major improvements in recent years in the way we use our purchasing power.

The conference is a superb way to bring together organisations to share their ideas and best practice and to discuss ways of pooling resources for the benefit of all."

Recent examples of best practice from Staffordshire County Council that will be discussed include our new online contract database and print commissioning policy.

The print commissioning policy alone will save the County Council an estimated £700,000 per year, starting this year, by channelling all but the smallest printing jobs through a specialist Print Commissioning Team.

So far the new policy is saving an average of between 20-30 per cent on each print job, and we have been able to cut the print costs of some units by up to 65 per cent.

The contract database is also thought to be the most advance in use by a public sector organisation in the UK.

"We will also be concentrating effort on sustainable procurement, which means buying in an environmentally-friendly way wherever it is cost-effective to do so. It is important that the public sector leads by example and helps make ethical products more widely available. We are proud that again we are leading in this area, particularly in the area of making our buildings as carbon-efficient as possible."

Page Last Modified: 07/06/2007 15:38:52

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