Public body procurement reports and strategies 2023 to 2024: analysis

1. Introduction

In 2024, the Scottish Government commissioned social research agency The Lines Between to review, analyse and report on public procurement activity across Scotland over three financial years: 2023 to 2024, 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026.

This report covers the 2023 to 2024 financial year. Findings are based on analysis of procurement strategies and annual procurement reports (including standardised data templates)^[5] submitted by 125 of Scotland’s public bodies. The report also includes comparisons with findings from analysis of procurement activity in two previous financial years: 2021 to 2022 and 2022 to 2023.

1.1 Background and context

The delivery of public services in Scotland relies on effective and transparent procurement processes which achieve value for money. In March 2021, the Scottish Government published Outcomes for Procurement which reflect Scotland’s National Performance Framework (Scottish Government, 2024a; Scottish Government n.d.). The outcomes set out how Scotland’s public bodies can procure goods, services and works in a way that is:

• Good for businesses and their employees
• Good for society
• Good for places and communities
• Open and connected

Public bodies in Scotland are required to deliver their procurement activity in compliance with a broad legislative framework, including the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and the Procurement (Scotland) Regulations 2016 (Scottish Government, 2014; Scottish Government 2015; Scottish Government, 2016).

Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014

The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (“2014 Act”) establishes a legislative framework for public procurement in Scotland, emphasising sustainable practices and the need for public bodies to consider the broader impact of their procurement activities (Scottish Government, 2014). The Act outlines which procurements it regulates, which are defined by specific financial thresholds, and it aims to ensure that public spending delivers maximum value for money while promoting social and environmental benefits.

The key provisions of the 2014 Act are:

• General Duties: The Act outlines general duties for contracting authorities, including the need to conduct procurements in a manner that is transparent, proportionate, and non-discriminatory.
• Sustainable Procurement Duty: Authorities are required to consider how their procurement activities can contribute to improving the economic, social, and environmental well-being of Scotland.
• Community Benefit Requirements: The Act encourages the inclusion of community benefit requirements in contracts, particularly for larger procurements, to ensure that local communities benefit from public spending.
• Statutory Guidance: The Scottish Ministers are empowered to issue statutory guidance to assist contracting authorities in complying with the Act, ensuring that they understand their obligations and best practices.
• Thresholds for Regulated Procurements: The Act sets specific financial thresholds that determine when the provisions of the Act apply, which are subject to periodic review and adjustment. For the 2023 to 2024 financial year, regulated procurements are those worth at least £50,000 for goods or services, or £2 million for works (Scottish Government, 2014).

In addition, public bodies with an estimated total value of regulated procurements^[6] of £5 million or over per financial year are required to prepare and publish a procurement strategy and annual procurement report. These documents set out the procurement vision and activity of an organisation, and help to support individual public bodies’ review processes.

Annual procurement reports are expected to be published within six months of the end of the financial year,^[7] however they may be published earlier or later.

Minimum requirements

The 2014 Act sets out the minimum content requirements that each strategy and report should include. For example, strategies should include a description of how value for money will be achieved and how procurement will contribute to achieving the authority’s purposes. Annual procurement reports should contain a summary of regulated procurements completed, community benefits fulfilled, a review of compliance with the public body’s procurement strategy and details of expected procurements to take place over the next two financial years (Scottish Government, 2014). More detail on the minimum requirements for reports and strategies is included in Appendix A.

Whilst not mandatory, public bodies are also asked to complete a standardised data template. The template contains quantitative fields covering procurement activity during the financial year, such as the total number of regulated contracts awarded, number of contracts awarded to SMEs and the number of regulated contracts awarded which included a scored Fair Work criterion.

The Scottish Government supplies public bodies with detailed guidance on how to complete the data template, which aims to help organisations to provide consistent and accurate information for analysis.

1.2 Methodology

This report presents analysis of 125 procurement strategies and annual procurement reports, and 124 associated data templates covering the 2023 to 2024 financial year.^[8] To enable the analysis to be completed in time for inclusion in this report, each year the Scottish Government sets a cutoff date by which public bodies’ annual procurement reports and strategies must be submitted in order to be included in the analysis. The deadline for submission of 2023 to 2024 strategies and annual procurement reports was 6 March 2025, by which date we had received one of each from 125 public bodies.^[9]

The Lines Between adopted a desk‑based methodology to review the procurement strategies and annual procurement reports. The analysis was based on a set of criteria that reflected the minimum required content for strategies and annual procurement reports, as set out in the 2014 Act.^[10] Each annual procurement report and strategy was read in full and individually assessed against these standards. For example, the 2014 Act requires that public bodies detail how they had facilitated involvement of supported businesses in procurement activities during the financial year. If an annual procurement report included a statement noting the public body’s specific policies related to encouraging the involvement of supported businesses in procurement activities, it was assessed as having met the requirement.

A team of five analysts reviewed the reports, strategies and associated data templates. The Scottish Government and The Lines Between coproduced standardised guidance on the legislative requirements regarding what should be included in annual procurement reports and strategies to support the team of analysts in determining what would constitute sufficient evidence to meet the requirements. This included examples drawn from previous reporting cycles. For example, when assessing whether reports demonstrated how regulated procurements had been carried out in accordance with general duties, analysts were reminded of the statutory requirement and given different examples of acceptable evidence. To further ensure consistency in the analytical approach taken, a standardised analysis framework was created using Snap Surveys, a questionnaire design software. The analysts used this framework to input their assessment of each strategy and annual procurement report against each of the criteria. Alongside assessments of whether the reports met legislative requirements, the framework included open‑ended text boxes to enable analysts to record qualitative observations, highlight specific examples, and comment on how fully each requirement had been addressed. The analysis framework contained 11 sections, including ‘organisation details’, ‘summary of regulated procurement & future regulated procurement’, ‘general duties’ and ‘sustainable procurement’. The full framework is available in Appendix B of this report.

A structured quality assurance process was applied to ensure that the analysis carried out was consistent, robust and accurate.

First, a pilot stage was implemented to test the analysis framework and establish a consistent approach among the team of five analysts. The first step of the pilot stage involved all five analysts convening to collectively and collaboratively analyse one public body’s procurement strategy and annual report. This exercise allowed for any queries about the analysis process to be raised and addressed, and helped ensure a consistent approach to the analysis was adopted across the team.

After this initial session, another public body’s procurement strategy and annual report was selected and analysed separately by each team member. The analysis was then collated and reviewed to confirm the analytical assessments were consistent across the team. Where inconsistencies were identified, these were discussed by the team to agree a solution, and further guidance was then issued to address this going forward.

Following this exercise, the third and final step of the pilot stage involved each team member independently analysing the procurement strategies and annual reports of two public bodies. These returns were then checked in full by the designated quality assurer, with analysts being ‘signed off’ to continue with analysis following the pilot stage.

Quality assurance protocols were implemented beyond the pilot phase, with the designated quality assurer continuing to perform regular, random audits on each member of the team’s analysis.

Research limitations

There are a number of limitations in relation to the data and analysis used in this report. These include:

• There is no comprehensive list of all the public bodies who either undertook a public procurement exercise during the 2023 to 2024 financial year, or who were supplied as part of an existing public contract. The analysis is therefore based on annual procurement reports and strategies that were submitted by 125 public bodies. This means that there are public bodies that are not represented in this analysis. Thus, this report does not present the full picture of public sector procurement activity in Scotland.
• Fewer annual procurement reports and strategies were included in the analysis for 2023 to 2024 than in previous years (125, compared to 132 in 2021 to 2022 and 133 in 2022 to 2023). This should be taken into consideration when looking at year on year comparisons.^[11]
• Due to reporting deadlines, documents submitted after an agreed deadline of 6 March 2025 were not included in the analysis.
• The analysis relies on the depth and accuracy of information included in strategies, annual procurement reports and data templates, which may not represent a full and accurate picture of all procurement activity in Scotland. For example, many data templates have gaps in data where the information is not known or not collected by public bodies.
• The analysis relies on the assessments of strategies and annual procurement reports from multiple analysts. To ensure consistency in these assessments, and to mitigate risks of subjectivity and bias in the analysis, analysts were issued standardised guidance and examples from previous reporting to support their analytical assessments. A series of quality assurance checks were also implemented to ensure the consistency, accuracy and robustness of the analysis.
• Some sections of the report include comparisons across sectors. When considering these findings, it is important to consider the variety in the number, size and type of public bodies in each sector.
• When considering analysis based on data provided by a small number of public bodies, the impact of an individual public body’s figures should be considered.