The council has a decentralised procurement service operating from a common set of objectives and documentation. This is designed to ensure effective control of public money and equity and equality to our supplier base.

For low value goods and services the council will select companies from its supplier list that it thinks can meet the requirement and invite them to do so.

The council must invite tenders were the value of goods or services exceeds £150,000 or the EU Public Procurement threshold.

You can downlad the procurement policy on the right hand side of this page.

Tenders and contracts

Our procurement procedures and strategy.

City of York Council is a unitary authority. As such we are responsible for all local government services in the area, including land and property, education and, social services.

Considerable competition exists for contracts with us. As such in order to be successful in winning council contracts suppliers will need to show an ability to supply high quality goods and services at competitive prices.

Procurement is big business - public sector expenditure among local authorities in England and Wales on goods and services is estimated to be £40 billion per annum. We spend around £118m each year on the procurement of our goods and services. Failure to purchase these effectively can put the achievement of key objectives and services at risk.

Procurement has been the subject of a number of national reports in recent years, culminating in the publication in October 2003 of the National Procurement Strategy (NPS).

Our procurement strategy brings together all of the key elements of the NPS, emphasising the use of procurement best practice. It provides specific focus to sustainability and equality (as well as key local procurement) issues, linking directly into our corporate governance principles of openness, inclusivity, integrity and accountability.

All stages of the procurement cycle must be in accordance with UK and European legal requirements, as well as reflecting our own policies and priorities.

In 2007 we intend to produce a list of existing and up-coming contracts which will be published here.