Sparsholt Colleges have forged links with many businesses that have helped towards achieving the strategic objective of procuring goods, works and services giving the best value for money both from a business perspective and for our students.
Sparsholt College purchase a wide and diverse range of goods and services, that not only provide students with learning materials, accommodation and transport but also support and maintain facilities such as our onsite zoo, our working farm and our fisheries amongst a number of other focused agricultural based areas. In addition, we require providers of facilities maintenance services to support over a hundred buildings established across two campuses.
The way in which we approach procurement is driven by the anticipated value of the contract as we need to fully comply with both EU procurement regulations and our own internal financial procedures.
Potential suppliers should, in the first instance provide an introductory e-mail or letter to the Procurement Officer, e-mail: tracey.angio@sparsholt.ac.uk outlining the goods or services you are able to provide. Your introduction will be forwarded to the appropriate department or faculty for their information and also retained by the Procurement Department for future reference.
As an FE and an HE College we are legally required to comply with EU tendering directives, the purpose of the directives is to encourage open and transparent competition throughout the European Union. Where it is anticipated that procurement will reach the threshold we will either purchase via a pre tendered framework agreement or advertise our requirement in the Official Journal of the European Union ourselves. The EU thresholds from the 1st January 2016 for services and Supplies is £164,176. A link to the applicable thresholds and further information is as follows: http://www.ojeu.com
Current tenders following the EU tendering directives will be advertised on the OJEU website. All related PQQs, Tender documents and completion dates will be available to download at the bottom of this page. Suppliers must not accept an order from Sparsholt unless they receive an official purchase order number which must be quoted on all related invoices. No automatic rollover of agreements are accepted unless agreed in advance in writing and is signed by an authorized person on behalf of the college and is backed up by a college official purchase order. If in doubt please contact the College Procurement Officer.
Sparsholt College may also choose to purchase through a consortia, such as The Crescent Purchasing Consortium (CPC) which boasts a membership of over 3,200 institutions throughout the U.K. CPC have a range of EU tendered contracts for members to access; carrying out a further competition exercise within the framework is an efficient way of obtaining best value and complying with our legal obligations. CPC appoint both national and regional suppliers for many of their contracts. For further details about the Crescent Purchasing Consortium their website is: www.cpc.salford.ac.uk
Depending on the type of requirement and value of the contract if there is not a suitable framework agreement in place we may choose to investigate the market and invite quotes or tender bids. Contracts for the value of £25,000 or above, where advertised will also be advertised in Contracts Finder https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder