Decision details

We are seeking permission to re procure the Councils supply of stationery and office supplies including paper, printer cartridges and general office supplies to all service areas across the Council.

The Executive Director of Resources approves the procurement of a supplier to meet Sheffield City Council’s stationery, paper and general office supplies requirements for the next 4 years through a mini-competition under the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation, Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation and the Central Buying Consortium Framework for Office Supplies as set out in the report.

We are mandated to have in place a transparent and compliant contract for the purchase of Office Stationery and Consumables, the value dictates we approach the market and necessitates the need to compete the business.

The proposed procurement strategy gives a timely opportunity to consult with stakeholders and the market for a refresh of current products, services and processes. It also gives us an opportunity to discuss the potential to baseline budgets based on any savings we drive through this procurement.

The proposal to use an established Framework assures that there has been wide and open competition and that successful framework suppliers have been quality assured over a number of service delivery requirements as well as being able to demonstrate a proven track record in supplies of this scale and nature without the need for the Council to spend resource on running the exercise in-house.

As this is third party spend at a level that triggers a procurement under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Standing Orders of the Council there is no opportunity to consider options other than the route to market. Options we have considered have been whether or not to do a full open tender in our own right or compete this via a further competition under a pre-existing compliant third party framework such as the YPO.  The option of a full tender run in-house would incur additional resource costs and is unlikely to lead to any real cost or service benefit which wouldn’t be gained utilising a further competition under the proposed framework.