Logistics and Warehousing solutions to help with your COVID-19 recovery

The current pandemic has increased pressure on frontline services with many local authorities, NHS trusts and blue light organisations needing to meet the increased demand for commodities and equipment required to support the COVID-19 response.

This is a challenge for many organisations where contingency stocks need to be stored and distributed locally in order to meet urgent, uncertain and varying demand from the communities they serve. 

How we’re supporting you

Our Logistics and Warehousing framework is already helping significantly with the storage and distribution requirements of organisations like yours. We provide a range of solutions to support the regional and national COVID-19 response.

We’ve helped with storing and distributing: 

  • PPE 
  • test kits 
  • medical equipment 
  • critical commodities 

The solutions available cover a broad spectrum, from ad-hoc short-term storage to longer term warehousing provision including temperature controlled environments, MRHA and GDP compliant storage and agile supply chain logistics.

A framework for fast, efficient and effective procurement

Framework agreements are increasingly becoming the desired route to market offering compliant, cost effective and rapid procurements underpinned by the Public Sector Contract (PSC).  This is even more critical at this unprecedented time when councils have enormous pressure placed upon in-house resources. 

Our pre-evaluated framework suppliers that include regional and national SMEs together with larger global companies offer a wide range of innovative products and services. These solutions can be tailored to meet your specific and local needs.  

We also provide a tried and tested way for organisations to reach out to the market in order to determine the best solutions. Our category teams are here to offer support and guidance around market capabilities, effective pricing structures and standardised contract terms.   

Social value matters

In addition, we place social value at the heart of our agreements and this first ever Logistics and Warehousing framework can deliver on key benefits such as:

  • COVID-19 recovery achieved by local PPE storage and distribution
  • regional employment growth through recruitment and business opportunities
  • supply chain resilience delivered by our SMEs through collaboration
  • a clear roadmap to tangible delivery of environmentally sustainable and Carbon Net Zero logistical solutions

Empowering you to make better buying decisions

If you want to find out more information on the above please visit our Logistics and Warehousing framework page.

Alternatively, if you would like to speak to a category expert at CCS, please complete our short contact form and we will be in touch.

You can also call us at 0345 410 2222 or email us at info@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

Special educational needs school saves over £53,000 on cleaning contract

The requirement

Chiltern Wood School strives for ‘success through wellbeing’. A high standard of daily cleaning to enable its 200 pupils, who have varying complex needs and learning styles, to learn and play in a clean environment is essential to them.

The school has bespoke cleaning requirements, including periodic deep cleaning, due to the range of facilities it provides to enhance the pupil experience. This includes soft play rooms, sensory rooms, occupational therapy rooms, student kitchens, and a hydrotherapy pool.

They need 140 cleaning hours per week across their 2 sites in High Wycombe, and wanted to consolidate 2 existing cleaning contracts into one to make it easier to manage.

The solution

Our Building Cleaning Services DPS was the ideal solution for Chiltern Wood School to source what they needed. It gave them access to a competitive pool of contract cleaning companies who were ready to provide services that met the school’s bespoke needs. To achieve the necessary cleaning standard, suppliers were required to meet the BICSc Standard, the professional cleaning standard set by The British Institute of Cleaning Science.

The school made the most of the support available from CCS, which included help writing the bespoke requirements specification and other tender documents, advising on the procurement timeline, and ensuring compliance with the procurement regulations.

 Vicky Clanfield, Business Manager at Chiltern Wood School, said:

From beginning to end CCS was fantastic. The expertise offered in relation to the cleaning specification and the support with compliance was second to none. As a school we don’t have access to procurement specialists, without incurring additional charges. CCS provided everything we needed and more, talking through each stage and explaining what to focus on – and this was all free to the school.

 The result

Chiltern Wood School has been able to put in place the cleaning contract they needed in a compliant and efficient way. What’s more, they will save more than £53,000 over the 5 year contract, compared to their previous contracts. 

The flexibility of our DPS agreement also meant the school could include their bespoke needs in the contract, ensuring the cleaning services will be maintained to the high standard that the school requires.

 Vicky added:

I was quite surprised at how much of a saving there was on the contract – it made it all worthwhile. I doubt we would have had the same outcome without the support of CCS. All savings made on the contract will be redirected into the resources in the classroom. We are already looking at how CCS can support the school with other contracts.

 Let us bring power to your procurement

Our Building Cleaning Services DPS offers you a flexible way to source cleaning services that suit your organisation’s needs. To find out more:

CCS supports SAFERjobs

During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminals took advantage of the uncertainties of many UK citizens by using fake job listings to trick people into handing over money or personal data. Reports of fake job listings soared by 70% between March and October 2020, and more than 750 reports were made to SAFERjobs.

SAFERjobs is a Metropolitan Police initiative to combat recruitment fraud, malpractice and breach of legislation. They work with many organisations across government, including Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Department for Work and Pensions, Trading Standards, City of London Police, the Home Office and Action Fraud. They can take enforcement action including removing websites and fake jobs. 

Making recruitment SAFER

We encourage all our recruitment framework suppliers to play their part to stamp out such activity, by signing up to the code of conduct and promoting SAFERjobs through their websites.

We want to give our customers the peace of mind of knowing that by choosing a CCS recruitment framework they are benefiting from:

  • a fully transparent recruitment supply chain with modern slavery compliance assessed to a standard over and above the current public sector procurement regulations
  • workers and suppliers can report any supply chain abuse safe in the knowledge that intelligence is shared across government organisations, as appropriate
  • ethical recruitment where people are recruited to standards such as those set by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)
  • fake job adverts will be removed from online sites

Empowering you to make safer recruitment decisions

Find out more about how we can help with your temporary recruitment needs:

If you would like to raise a concern through SAFERjobs, please complete their incident report form.

Face-to-face research: guidance for the safe use of viewing facilities

Lockdown restrictions are cautiously being eased across England and, as a result, face-to-face research and data collection activities that were stopped in their tracks last year are becoming viable options once more.

In particular, viewing facilities have reopened as of 29 March 2021 and will allow for focus groups to meet and depth interviewing to take place on a limited basis where no other alternative methodology is appropriate.

There are published processes and guidance available on safer working to ensure that these activities can resume with participants’ and researchers’ safety at the top of the agenda.

The Market Research Society has published a great resource on undertaking face-to-face data collection in halls, venues and viewing facilities, which you can view here, so when you are planning your research and thinking about the methodologies you need, please keep viewing facilities in mind.

To support the industry and ensure great outcomes for your face-to-face requirements you can plan and share your pipeline with CCS. We have some pointers on what useful questions to ask when developing your plan in our earlier blog here.

By sharing your thinking with us, we can let our research suppliers know what may be coming up. Any field work takes time to prepare with suitable resourcing, so sharing a pipeline in advance can ensure suppliers are in the best possible position to deliver the best service and outcomes.

We’re here for you

The Research & Insights team at Crown Commercial Service are here to help you with your research objectives.

If you have any queries, questions or comments, please get in touch with us via email.

Ministry of Justice saves £500,000 with our Payment Solutions framework

The Ministry of Justice, alongside their executive agency HMPPS (Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service), is responsible for the prison estate across England and Wales. This includes the provision of safe, secure and supportive prisons that reform offenders.  

The problem

One aspect of this duty is ensuring that all publicly managed prisons in England & Wales receive the food they need to keep in excess of 100 prisons and over 70,000 prisoners fed and watered. 

This is a huge administrative task, resulting in the department previously receiving in excess of 70,000 invoices per year from their main contracted food supplier.

In a bid to use staff time more effectively along with improving supplier relationships and generating funds, in 2017 the Ministry of Justice looked to CCS to implement a procurement card programme. 

The solution

The Ministry of Justice had previously taken advantage of our framework and had begun to reap the benefits of this against some lower volume contracts.  

They identified that the transactional nature of the HMPPS food contract (high volume and low value) would suit this solution and realise further benefits.  

Les Cook, a Commercial Lead at the Ministry of Justice, said: 

We recognised that, if we used the Payment Solutions framework for this contract, we could save significant internal resource whilst improving the experience for end users and strengthening the supplier relationship.

The results

The Ministry of Justice are now in their 5th year using procurement cards, currently under our Payment Solutions framework (RM3828), and have enjoyed transformative results:

  • through implementing a virtual card, the manual processing associated with 70,000 invoices has been eliminated and this has saved in the region of £500,000 per year.   
  • the previous payment solution often resulted in a high level of overdue debt, which consumed further resources. Eliminating this has meant that contract management staff are able to shift focus to core tasks, spending more time implementing improvements elsewhere.
  • using payment cards improved the Ministry of Justice’s payment times to suppliers from 30 days to around 4 – significantly strengthening their supply chain and improving relationships with suppliers. This has been hugely beneficial in recent times given the volatile cashflows of the supplier due to COVID-19.

 Reflecting on the impact the Payment Solutions framework has had, Les Cook said:

In addition to the £500,000 of savings, we have also eradicated historic problems with high amounts of overdue debt.  This had a much broader benefit of improving relationships between the department and supplier and allowed us both to redeploy resource onto added value and strategically important pieces of work.  

Linking the virtual card to the suppliers’ ordering portal has also delivered improved product information and improved accessibility for end users which has seen our order compliance improve.

I would recommend that procurement cards are considered by other departments when considering acquisition arrangements for low value, high volume transactions.

It’s important that this is thoroughly reviewed prior to implementation and in advance of any associated procurement activity.  Costs and benefits need to be clearly understood by both parties as it will impact on both the department and supplier.

Start benefiting today 

As we emerge from COVID-19, and face the challenge of continuing to deliver world-class public services despite the unprecedented pressure on resources, it’s crucial that every pound and every hour is spent as efficiently as possible.

Greater use of procurement cards is a quick and easy way to generate funds while freeing up staff to focus on other priorities.

We recommend that all organisations conduct a thorough review of all current and future purchases to see where there’s an opportunity to spend more on cards. 

It’s quick and easy to integrate procurement cards into your organisation. You can start saving time and money, strengthening your supply chain, generating additional funds, and enjoying increased financial control within weeks. 

Next steps 

G-Cloud 12 framework extension

Crown Commercial Service has decided to extend G-Cloud 12 for 12 months from its original end date of 27 September 2021 to 27 September 2022. 

The extension gives CCS the time to make improvements to the customer journey including accessibility, search functionality, and the presentation of the Digital Marketplace platform, before the next iteration of the agreement is delivered. It is anticipated that these enhancements will also help to increase opportunities for suppliers.

We’re consulting with suppliers and customers over the planned changes, and updated information regarding G-Cloud 13 will be provided in the near future via the Digital Marketplace and the Upcoming Deals page. 

Please note that the extension to G-Cloud 12 does not give suppliers the right to increase pricing or to materially change services, as mentioned in clauses 3.2 and 3.7 of the framework agreement. 

If you require further information regarding the G-Cloud 12 extension please email info@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

Changes to our frameworks in March

Welcome to our monthly framework update to help you with your procurement planning. We will publish it online each month and also share it in our newsletters and on our social media channels.

The update provides a brief summary of what has been awarded, extended or expired during the previous month. It also outlines what is due to expire in the next 3 months.

You can also get an overview of all of our live frameworks in our interactive digital brochure.

Frameworks awarded in March 

Frameworks extended in March

  • No frameworks were extended in March

Frameworks that expired in March

  • Supply, Delivery and Installation of Furniture and Associated Services (RM3812)
  • Water, Wastewater and Ancillary Services (RM3790)

Frameworks due to expire in the next 3 months

Further information

If you need further details about any of these frameworks please get in touch. 

If you don’t currently receive our monthly customer newsletter why not also subscribe to receive these updates and more directly to your inbox? Just fill in this short form.

Crown Commercial Service announces a 3 year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft UK

Our new Digital Transformation Arrangement 21 (DTA21) will allow all eligible public sector customers to benefit from a baseline of Microsoft pricing and discounts. The agreement represents significant savings for customers, particularly for those who want to maximise the efficiencies of their Microsoft estate. The current ‘DTA’ MoU expires on 30 April 2021, and our new agreement will be available for customer enrolments from 1 May 2021 onwards.

Philip Orumwense, Commercial Director and Chief Technology Procurement Officer at Crown Commercial Service said: 

This agreement recognises the significance of cloud computing to the UK public sector as it continues its digital transformation and aims to build back better. It is another example of CCS’s commitment to achieving outstanding commercial value for our customers across the public sector.

By treating the UK government and wider public sector as a single client, the DTA21 allows access to preferential commercial terms. It was designed to support principles from Digital, Data and Technology and the One Government Cloud Strategy, as well as more recent issues such as supporting COVID-19 recovery and the sustainability and social value agenda.

The MoU is not a route to market, however it shows our commitment to support the public sector, as the pricing and discounts are available through any route to market. We recommend using lot 3 of our Technology Products and Associated Services (RM6068) framework but customers can access the same pricing through competitor frameworks.

Let us bring power to your procurement 

If you would like to discover how your organisation could benefit from our new DTA21 arrangement, you can register for our monthly complimentary customer webinars:

We will also be running a number of aggregated competitions to assist customers in procuring their Microsoft requirements. Visit the aggregation page on our website to find out more.

To benefit from extra Microsoft related support such as strategic advice on how to achieve the best value from your software estate, as well as best practice procurement activities, or to find out more, please complete our online form quoting ‘Microsoft DTA21 MoU’ and we will be in touch.

Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) implement extra cleaning measures amid the pandemic, to allow vital work to continue

The requirement

HMCTS and MoJ carry out vital work throughout their court and tribunal buildings across the country. In order to enable this work to continue safely throughout the pandemic, they were required to enhance their cleaning measures, to ensure their buildings were COVID-secure. Their requirements included the implementation of a touchpoint cleaning service for existing court buildings and a full cleaning service for temporary court buildings that had been set up to safely increase capacity. 

The core aim and challenge was to source the additional cleaning services within extremely tight timescales, whilst maintaining compliance to procurement regulations and Cabinet Office controls. Additionally, they also needed to ensure a quality service that provided value for money. 

The solution

The Building Cleaning Services agreement from CCS was the perfect solution for HMCTS to source these additional requirements. CCS had a thorough understanding of the services required and the urgent nature of the contract, and provided pro-active, valuable support to HMCTS to facilitate the procurement efficiently and compliantly.

The agreement provided access to specialised touchpoint cleaning, which involves trained personnel continually cleaning and sanitising high traffic areas and touchpoints such as:

  • communal spaces and rooms used for proceedings
  • door handles, surfaces, seating 
  • hand wash basins

The result 

By working with CCS, HMCTS were able to procure a range of services to ensure their buildings were COVID-secure for both staff and visitors, thus allowing essential and vital services to continue amid the pandemic. 

The flexibility of the dynamic purchasing system (DPS) conveniently allowed HMCTS to supplement their existing out-of-hours cleaning contract with bespoke cleaning requirements. 

Kim Newman, Procurement Lead at HMCTS, MoJ said:

We have been working with the team at CCS, on an urgent call off contract for cleaning services. 

I wanted to say that the team has been exceptional in their service provision, working tirelessly to get the documents written, verified and updated as the procurement process progressed. Their attention to detail, professional advice and assistance needs to be acknowledged and I would like to offer my thanks to the team for their efforts.

Interested in cleaning services from CCS? Get in touch via our online form and quote ‘Building Cleaning Services’. 

Buy furniture sustainably and simply through CCS

Our furniture agreement offers an extensive range of solutions to all customers across the whole public sector. The agreement enables you to direct award or drive additional savings via further competition, while also allowing you to buy more consciously by addressing your social value and sustainability targets. 

What can I buy?

The agreement offers a wide range of furniture including:

  • office 
  • residential
  • education
  • steel storage
  • bespoke furniture
  • CPNI rated secure furniture
  • repair and renovation services.

In addition to the wide range of goods offered, our agreement offers a range of complimentary services including space planning, site surveys, end of life disposal and move management and reconfiguration services. 

How does the agreement help me buy more consciously?

Social value is key under the new agreement and suppliers are committed to supporting in a number of areas. All suppliers are required to submit an ‘Annual Social Value Report’ which includes reporting on modern slavery, diversity of their supply chains, fair and inclusive employment practices and environmental sustainability.

Suppliers also support the Greening Government Commitment, ensuring all packaging of products is reusable or readily recyclable. Buyers can also choose to reuse existing furniture items, rather than purchasing new furniture, by accessing repair and renovation services under lot 7.

The agreement also provides waste management services, meaning suppliers can collect furniture and will either recycle, repair or refurbish the item for reuse.  They’ll work with the customer to offer this service for little or no cost where possible.

Over 80% of the suppliers on the agreement are SMEs.

How can I find out more?

Register for our webinar, on 28 April at 10am, where you can find out more about how you can save money and keep your furniture purchasing sustainable.