Coalition to help SMEs by streamlining procurement rules

Francis Maude is streamlining procurement rules across Whitehall in an attempt to double the share of the government’s annual £191bn procurement budget won by small and medium-sized companies.

The cabinet office minister and David Cameron, will announce he is scrapping onerous “pre-qualification questionnaires” for SMEs to make it easier for them to apply for government contracts.

He is also instructing Whitehall to simplify complicated tender documents to open up the bidding process as well as encouraging mandarins to adopt a more private sector mindset when being pitched for business.

The goal is to get 25 per cent of all procurement contracts going to small businesses.

Stephen Bentley, Owner and CEO, Granby Marketing Services said: “I welcome changes to the application process for government contracts. At the moment the PQQ procedure is expensive and labour intensive for SMEs which puts many off applying for contracts. By slimming down the initial assessment stages, the speed of turnaround should improve. It’s important to add a level of common sense to the assessment process, there will be times when the right company for the job won’t fit extensive criteria lists exactly but there is a good reason to keep them in the process. Obviously there will also be a level of box ticking but keeping this to a minimum is important.

"There has been a shift in mindset to the view that smaller companies can handle government contracts. At the moment relatively small contracts still tend to go to a big organisation by default which doesn’t make sense. For example with call centres a contract that needs six people to manage the work load, will still tend to go to a major call centre with hundreds of seats. I think this initiative will be better than previous attempts to give more government contracts to SMEs as they have set a clear target. It’s always easy to say we want to encourage SMEs but a clear target makes it measurable and the organisations involved more accountable.

"There has to be a balance to ensure the manual process of sifting through applications is manageable for government staff but at the same time companies shouldn’t have to write the equivalent of ‘War and Peace’ in order to win a £2,000 contract. I think the key question now is when will this take effect? For many business owners it can’t come soon enough.”