Scottish Government procurement annual report: 2020

2. Reporting period highlights

In the period April 2019 to March 2020:

Power of procurement

• Scottish public sector bodies spent £1.35 billion on goods and services through our contracts to support delivery of public services, up from £1.12 billion in 2018/2019.  
• Our contracts saved the public sector £160 million, a rise of 8% on the previous year. 

Good for businesses and their employees

• The number of regulated contracts/frameworks awarded to SMEs in the period rose from 51 last year to 96 in 2019/2020.
• The number of unique SME suppliers winning places on our contracts has increased by 16%. 
• As a result, SMEs now occupy 61% of the total number of unique suppliers on live regulated procurements. 
• Of the £369 million that Scottish Government spent through its contracts, over £120 million went directly to SMEs, with many more SMEs benefiting through our supply chains; they shared over £40 million of spend as subcontractors, £30 million of that going to Scottish SMEs.  
• We paid 99% of valid invoices within 10 days, getting cash into the economy as quickly as possible.
• 92% of our suppliers with current live contracts are committed to paying at least the Real Living Wage.

Good for places and communities

• We almost doubled the annual number of contracts awarded with community benefits to 34, bringing the total of live contracts with Community Benefits to 69. 

Good for society 

• We maintained spend through our Supported Business framework at just over £6 million. 
• As well as continuing to support thousands of existing jobs, our contracts enabled the creation of 81 brand-new jobs, 40 apprenticeships, 52 work placements and 417 qualifications to be achieved through training.

Open and connected 

• We delivered our Open Government commitments to consult with civil society on the publication of procurement related data and to publish contract documentation for our large, collaborative frameworks. 
• Across Scotland, over 500 organisations continued to use Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) to advertise contract opportunities. During the reporting period, 15,870 contract opportunities were advertised and 18,421 suppliers awarded contracts.
• A further seven Scottish public bodies joined our national eInvoicing shared service, bringing the total number of participating organisations to 25.
• Our Procurement Journey was completely refreshed and relaunched in March 2020 following extensive consultation with users from across the Scottish public sector.