The process of bidding for Scottish public sector contracts is difficult. Organisations referred to challenges with a lack of time or capacity to bid, the complexity of the bidding process and difficulties in meeting the requirements of the contracts.
There remains a keen interest amongst third sector organisations and new private businesses in participating in Scottish public procurement. Research participants were able to identify significant benefits of contracting with the public sector, including financial security, favourable payment terms and access to interesting and unique opportunities.
Those that are already active participants (on the whole) wish to continue to bid for public contracts, and among those organisations that had not bid for contracts in the past five years there was a keenness to become involved if barriers could be removed or reduced.
Among stakeholders, there was recognition that Scottish Government and the wider public sector have made significant progress in relation to procurement in recent years and there has been continuous improvement and a willingness to drive forward change. However, participants also voiced concerns that this does not always translate down to improvements in implementation at a local level.
Organisations representing new private businesses reported that, in their view, despite the implementation of the Sustainable Procurement Duty, the dial has not moved in terms of the value and share of contracts going to SMEs. Meanwhile, the feedback in relation to third sector organisations is that their share of contracts has increased, but not sufficiently quickly.