Guide for suppliers
Value for money is not just about accepting the lowest price but about ensuring efficiency and effectiveness too.
Value for money is defined as the best balance between total cost and quality, to meet the needs of the local community.
Therefore when buying goods or services we consider the following:
- price (total or 'whole life' cost)
- quality (includes business continuity, equal opportunities, environment management, experience, financial standing, health and safety, insurance)
Contracts with us
Generally, contracts above the thresholds applicable are awarded after a competitive tendering process. Those thresholds are £173,934 for goods and services and £4,348,350 for works.
Havering Contracts Register
The Contract Register is a database that lists contracts in place with the London Borough of Havering.
By looking at the contracts register you will be able to see contracts and search amongst them by commodity or service.
You can also see which contracts are coming up to expiry, and name of the contract manager.
Supply 4 London
We also advertises some lower-value contract opportunities on the Supply 4 London website.
We do not operate central 'approved supplier' lists. However, the purchase of goods, services or works below £100,000 is handled at departmental or service level within the Council. The senior managers heading these departments or services may maintain their own 'approved supplier' lists.
Contact the head of the relevant department for details of how you may be added to those lists.
When procuring contracts, we follows UK and European law relating to public procurement.
We have our own internal public procurement rules and procedures which are set out in our contracts procedure rules. The rules are currently being updated and will be published when ready.
e-Procurement
We are committed to making it easier to contact the public and businesses via the internet.
Both the Council and our suppliers can benefit from the opportunities provided by buying goods online, ie reduced paperwork, faster payments to suppliers and better, more accurate information for both parties.
In order to achieve this goal we have implemented the following features and systems:
- i-procurement
- e-invoicing
- Purchasing cards
- Prepaid cards
The introduction of i-procurement and e-invoicing means that we no longer accept paper invoices.