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Current regulations mean that the award of a contract without any advertising or competition may be challenged by aggrieved suppliers in the Sheriff Court or Court of Session, even where the contract is itself exempt from the detailed advertising and procedural requirements in the Scottish Regulations and or EU UK Directives.
Guidance from the Scottish Government states that it is for individual contracting bodies to decide whether advertising is required (and in what form) and to defend their decisions as necessary. Decisions which are documented and based on legitimate business needs and objective criteria are likely to be defensible.
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(iii) If the results of the sourcing routines described in (i) and (ii) above prove unhelpful then requests for quotations or, in cases where the requirement is of a highly technical nature and/or expensive, competitive tender documents should be prepared and issued. In order to avoid a ”battle of forms” at a later date, a copy of the appropriate RoS Terms and Conditions of Purchase must be issued with each written request for quotation or tender. Terms and conditions of Goods, Services, Consultancy, Goods and Services can be found here.
(iv) Any sourcing exercise will normally be undertaken by the Procurement Department, however in those exceptional cases where the Business Unit has been authorised to undertake their own sourcing and is requesting the use of a particular supplier they must attach documentation to their Pecos requisition to support this request. The documentation must include evidence of quotations or a business case to support the request to use a supplier without competition.
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- Should the ‘purchase’ be considered as a Small Business Change and undertaken via the Programme Office
- Have the Design Authority been consulted with regard to security and technical fit
- Has Information Assurance been considered (see Section 5.7) and has a Privacy Impact Assessment been undertaken (see section 5.8)
Important:
It cannot be overstressed that non-procurement staff must not sign any agreement or contract or verbally commit or imply in any way to have committed RoS funds by whatever means to any potential supplier. Commitments of RoS funds can only authorised by the Procurement Department.