Increase in number of suppliers predicted to increase public sector savings to £220 million over four years
The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has launched a new version of its Spend Analysis and Recovery Services procurement framework, increasing the number of service providers and aiming to attract more users from the public sector beyond Whitehall.
The 19 suppliers include accountancy and audit specialists – up from five on the previous version – with expertise in areas such as telecoms, utilities and VAT and including a few SMEs.
They will work with CCS and public authorities on a contingent ‘no win, no fee’ basis to analyse financial transactions and commercial agreements, identify overpayments, errors or financial benefits that had not previously been realised. These can apply up to six years after an error or overpayment.
The framework consists of seven lots: statement transaction review, end-to-end review, and contract compliance for utilities, telecoms and mobiles, contingent labour and agency staff, VAT and property and rental review.
CCS said the previous iteration had provided savings of over £15 million over the five years of its operation, calculated by deducting the cost of fees paid to suppliers from the total amounts successfully recovered.
Additional benefits
It forecast that Spend Analysis and Recovery Services 2 will help public authorities to recover more than £220 million over the next four years. It also pointed to benefits of no up-front costs, a minimal draw on internal resources, and extra value in identifying weaknesses in processes and systems.
Matthew Sparkes, deputy director for financial services at CCS, said: “The use of spend recovery services is commonplace in the private sector, not just to identify and recover valuable funds, but also to understand where to make process improvements that ensure errors won’t happen again.
“By combining our own CCS category expertise with our suppliers’ commercial expertise we can ensure that the public sector pays only for the goods and services it actually receives.”
