Collaboration and Partnerships

Where there is a key financial or public benefit, Surrey Heath is keen to work with other local authorities and public service organisations to maximise economies of scale to deliver cost and service efficiencies. To facilitate this, Surrey Heath is a member of the "Surrey Procurement Network", this is a group consisting of all 11 Surrey districts and the County Council. It is looking to achieve best value by exploiting opportunities to combine regional buying power through joint working and partnerships. Recent examples include a joint stationery buying agreement and another one for cash collection services. Current projects are looking at joint tendering on postal services and ways of saving telephony costs

The council is also a key member Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE). This group is currently designing framework agreements jointly with Hampshire and Surrey for use by all member authorities for construction, consultancy and facilities. These agreements will not only deliver better value but also reduce significantly the costs of procurement for member organisations.

The council also takes advantage of framework agreements tendered by Government Buying consortia such as the Office for Government Commerce (OGC) which negotiates contracts on behalf of central and local government and can thus obtain substantial savings. Such contracts are fully OJEU compliant and can using them not only demonstrates best value in the prices charged but also significantly reduces the costs of procurement.

Improvement and Efficiency South East
Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE) is the South East Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP), established to help the region's 74 local authorities in their drive to increase efficiency and improve services. Please visit their website www.southeastiep.gov.uk Opens in a new window for further information.

Surrey Heath, with the assistance of IESE, is in the process of putting together a construction on FM framework agreement which should save significant sums for Surrey Authorities.