Equality and Diversity in Procurement

Introduction

With an annual expenditure of around £470 million on goods, services and works, the eight partner authorities have an important opportunity to use their purchasing power to promote social equality wherever possible. Procurement Lincolnshire is committed to using its procurement activities to support this important policy objective. Local authorities in Lincolnshire are working towards assessment and progression against the Equality Framework for Local Government (EFLG). The EFLG is a maturity model which can be used to map out how a particular authority can move towards excellent performance on equality issues. An important element of the EFLG is considering how local authorities use their procurement influence to promote equality and diversity issues. 

Addressing equalities in the procurement process

The first stage to addressing equality issues in public procurement is for the public authority to incorporate equality in their overarching procurement strategies. To this end, Procurement Lincolnshire’s “Sustainable Procurement Strategy” articulates the commitment of the eight partner authorities to use its procurement processes to support the furthering of equality objectives.  

Additionally, Procurement Lincolnshire will consider equality issues (where they are relevant) at the following stages of procurement activity:

• Pre-procurement – when identifying the need for goods, services or works
• Specification stage – when deciding the requirement
• Selection stage – when selecting suppliers to invite to tender
• Award stage – in selecting the successful supplier
• Contract conditions – in the performance of the contract
• Relationship management – through contract management and  or a voluntary basis

Hence, the consideration of equality issues is fully integrated into the procurement decision making process. 

EU procurement regime

Procurers and commissioners should be mindful that actions taken to address equality issues through the procurement process must be consistent with the EU procurement regime (EU Treaty and EU procurement directive). Additional guidance on how equality can be taken into account in public procurement whilst complying with this legislation is available from the Cabinet Office – see ‘Make Equality Count’ and ‘Social Issues in Purchasing’ guidance materials. For further advice and practical support on this issue, please contact Procurement Lincolnshire.

Procurement E&D Toolkit

To support colleagues in taking equality into account in the procurement process, a toolkit (see downloads tab) is available which has been designed specifically to address equality issues in procurement. This toolkit provides procurers with suggested pre-qualification questions, contract terms and conditions and areas for contract monitoring in relation to equality. A series of workshops have been delivered to support key procurers in making use of the toolkit – slides from these events are available in the downloads tab.