B22: Procurement and Social Enterprise

Procurement covers all of the processes involved in requesting, ordering, auditing, and paying for goods and services from an external provider . Local government spends over £40 billion of our taxes each year on external goods and services. Ensuring Best Value in procurement strategies has been pushed up the agenda in the last six months, with the publication of several key reports .

In this edition of CLES bulletin we will consider some of the central issues in the reform of local government procurement strategies, and the role that social enterprise and the third sector could be playing in public service provision.