Supplying Borders College with Goods & Services

As a public body, Borders College is required to apply relevant external regulation to our procedures.

Most of the regulation was adopted from EU legislation plus extra requirements layered over these from Scottish government. Post Brexit, the EU rules are still relevant in UK law, but are under scrutiny currently so may change in the near future. For spend under the EU/Scottish Law thresholds we have our own internal rules at Borders College. Please see below for a brief overview of how this works in practice:

• Spend less than £5,000 – the purchase must represent value for money for the College.
• Spend between £5,000 and £25,000 – a minimum of 3 competitive quotes should be obtained or a relevant framework can be used.
• Spend Between £25,000 and £50,000 – a minimum of 3 quotes should be obtained, usually via the Public Contracts Scotland portal, or a relevant framework can be used.
• Spend on Supplies & Services over £50,000 – a relevant framework should be used or a full tender exercise conducted via the Public Contracts Scotland portal and the Sustainable Procurement Duty applies.
• Spend on Works over £2M – a relevant framework should be used or a full tender exercise conducted via the Public Contracts Scotland portal and the Sustainable Procurement Duty applies to spend over £2,000,000.
• Spend on Works over £4,000,000 – Community Benefits must be delivered as part of the contract.

A framework is the result of a collective tender for goods or services undertaken by representative bodies in the public sector. Frameworks cover a multitude of goods and services, and suppliers can engage in the bidding process by registering with Public Contracts Scotland, where all Scottish tenders are advertised – https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/

Borders College is able to use suppliers from frameworks provided by several organisations. Please see the list below, which is not exhaustive but covers most of the organisations and has links to their websites for further information:

• APUC – Advanced Procurement for Universities & Colleges – https://www.apuc-scot.ac.uk/
• Scottish Procurement – national purchasing by Scottish Government – https://www.gov.scot/publications/frameworks-and-contracts/
• Crown Commercial Services – UK Government national purchasing – https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements
• TUCO – The University Caterers Organisation – https://www.tuco.ac.uk/
• NWUPC – North Western Universities Purchasing Consortium – https://www.nwupc.ac.uk/
• NEUPC – North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium – https://www.neupc.ac.uk/

Suppliers should be provided with an authorised Purchase Order before any goods or services are delivered.

The PO number should be quoted on the invoice to avoid delays in payment.

Invoices should be forwarded to finance@borderscollege.ac.uk.

We have two ordering processes – a system called Pecos that automatically emails the PO to a given email address, and a manual process – usually this order will be also emailed to the supplier by a member of the team.

As a public body, we are obliged to publish a contract register detailing all formal contracts over £50,000. This can be viewed by following the link to the APUC website – https://www.apuc-scot.ac.uk/#!/institution?inst=40

As part of our recently relaunched Sustainability Strategy and in response to the Climate Emergency, further emphasis will be placed on improving and monitoring the sustainability outcomes of our purchases of goods and services and also influencing the supply chain that we use.

Further details of this are in our Procurement Strategy and in the Borders College Sustainability Strategy.