New food contract for Darlington Borough Council
Case Study: New food contract for Darlington Borough CouncilRegion: North East
Organisation: North East Land Links/ Darlington Borough Council
Description:
North East Land Links (NELL) and Darlington Borough Council (DBC) established contact in January 2005 during an information gathering exercise being undertaken by NELL. Subsequently the two organisations entered into discussions regarding the possibility of a joint project on food procurement, with the emphasis being on the development of a new set of food tender documents.
The partners wished to explore the extent to which they could amend DBC’s approach to procurement in order to achieve against the objectives of the PSFPI, the National Procurement Strategy (NPS) and their Community Strategy. Additionally, NELL wished to produce a ‘model’ food tender with a view to this forming the basis of a new standard regional document. On this basis NELL was able to secure funding to take this work forward from the regional Sustainable Farming and Food Strategy Group. The document is based on an existing tender but contains twenty six amendments related to the PSFPI.
Benefits:
- A local organic milk supplier won the milk contract (on price as well as quality) in direct competition with a major national competitor offering conventional milk. The origins of the milk being supplied are traceable.
- A large previously opted out comprehensive school chose to start re-using the councils catering service.
- The delivery schedule has been changed to reduce the overall number of journeys required. This both reduces overall food miles, and reduces traffic in the school environment whilst also helping to make the contract more accessible to smaller suppliers with more limited delivery capacity.
- The winners of the fresh fruit and vegetables and meat contracts have agreed to work with the council on several issues relating to the PSFPI and DBC’s Community Strategy. For example, suppliers are encouraged to reduce packaging, to use recycled packaging material and to be responsible for the ownership and reclamation of packaging from local authority premises.
- Clauses from the document have been extracted and used by other organisations.
Lessons learned during implementation:
- Small and medium sized enterprises can compete both on price and quality with national suppliers. Bigger does not always equate to cheaper.
- The fact that an authority is working on developing a more sustainable approach to food procurement can serve as a useful marketing tool, both with parents and with opted out schools.
- Change, at least initially, entails more work. This can be a problem when staff resources are stretched.
- NELL brokered the project, Darlington didn’t need to make any specific changes to their requirements to enable this but still needed the dairy to put in a competitive tender.
Future developments:
It is intended that the tender document produced by this project will form the basis of a standardised food tender document which will be available for use by all local authorities in the north east. This work is being taken forward by the North East Centre of Excellence.
Further Information:
Contact: Bill Kirkup
Co-ordinator Public Sector Food Procurement Programme
North East Centre of Excellence
billkirkup@gateshead.gov.uk
0191 433 2288 or
07766 500054
See www.nece.gov.uk
Page published: 9 May 2007