The Role of Procurement in Enforcement

In this week’s leading the way series blog, Sarah Jarvis, Category Buyer - Corporate and Financial Services at YPO, explains the role of public sector procurement specialists and how they work in conjunction with companies like Bristow & Sutor.  

Over to Sarah …  

YPO was established over four decades ago by local government authorities to help combine their procurement demands and achieve efficiency savings. Today we are still 100% publicly owned but work with even more organisations to achieve the same goal. 

YPO supplies products and services to a wide range of customers including schools, local authorities, charities, emergency services, public sector and other businesses such as nurseries and care homes. The profits we make are returned to our public sector customers, delivering even better value for money. We have a large choice available from leading UK suppliers, including around 30,000 products and 100 frameworks.  

After receiving lots of enquiries from local authorities who wanted an enforcement contract, we responded to the demand and launched the Enforcement Agencies DPS Contract in April 2019. The nature of this type of contract means new suppliers can be accepted at any time, but we began with 13 forward thinking companies, including Bristow & Sutor. We are now up to 21 suppliers awarded and Bristow & Sutor have remained part of this framework throughout its lifecycle.  

Typically, a council will let us know they are looking to enlist an enforcement agency and then YPO will run competitions on their behalf.  We manage customers clarifications, download tender submissions and send these on to customers. We will also review successful and unsuccessful letters prior to award. Once signed off and advertised, all suppliers on our framework are notified of the details and can decided whether they would like to supply a bid and be considered for the job.  

Last year, we supported 19 local authority enforcement needs. Of these, four contracts were awarded to Bristow & Sutor. This year has of course been unique with the onset of COVID-19, but as the enforcement industry begins getting back to normality, we are seeing the demand for new competitions beginning to resume. At time of writing, we have one request live, at least three more in the pipeline and eight needs on hold from prior to lockdown but expected to resume in due course.  

We are delighted to work with organisations like Bristow & Sutor and look forward to continuing to connect local authorities with high-quality services in future. For more information on this contract, please email [email protected]