The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has announced a new version of the public sector contract with revised terms and conditions designed to make public work more accessible to smaller companies. Crown Representative for Small Business Emma Jones was quoted as saying:
“The new CCS contract is shorter and easier to understand and takes a more standardised approach. This should save SMEs time and money when deciding to bid for CCS deals and I welcome the approach.”
Likewise, the view from Tenders Direct is that this – along with any other initiative to minimise the complexity of public contracting – is a step in the right direction. One of the more common pieces of feedback we receive from SMEs is that they find the administrative burden involved in bidding for public contracts challenging and often feel dissuaded from tendering at all.
Our Head of Training and Consultancy Gemma Waring elaborates on why this is a positive development for smaller suppliers:
“Many SMEs simply don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to fully digest and understand complex terms and conditions, which puts them in danger of signing up to liabilities, penalties, and requirements they cannot meet in practice. The new T&Cs will allow suppliers to develop a fuller and lasting understanding of their obligations without having to review and challenge different sets in each tendering exercise. All the time and effort saved can be more usefully applied to formulating successful bids.”
If you have any questions about this or any other aspect of public sector tendering let us know in the comments below!
