Consultation outcome

Making public sector procurement more accessible to SMEs

From:: Cabinet Office, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care, and Home Office
Published: 19 September 2013
Last updated: 7 December 2013 — See all updates

Detail of outcome

Feedback received

Analysis of responses to consultation on making public sector procurement more accessible to SMEs

PDF, 189 KB, 6 pages

Detail of feedback received

We received responses from 155 organisations, representing a broad range of suppliers, industry bodies and procuring authorities. We are grateful to all those stakeholders who responded to the consultation paper and/or participated in one of the consultation meetings.

The response document describes the overall results of the consultation and summarises the main points raised by stakeholders.

Read Small business: GREAT ambition, the government’s commitment to helping small businesses grow.

Original consultation

Consultation description

In May 2013, the Prime Minister’s advisor on enterprise and small business, Lord Young of Graffham, recommended developing a set of “single market” principles to be applied by all public bodies in their procurement. Read Growing your business: a report on growing micro businesses.

The government has now committed to consult on the high level standards which all public bodies should be looking to achieve.

This consultation describes the single market principles which suppliers should expect when doing business with the public sector. These principles should simplify and standardise the advertising, bidding and payment of public contracts, and should remove the complexity, cost and inconsistency when trying to sell to more than one public sector body. They would apply to businesses as direct contractors with government and as sub-contractors or partners in a procurement supply chain.

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