News Update

Week Ending 2nd September 2005

Cumbrian Collaboration

We are delighted to welcome Clare Poulter, currently Deputy Chief Executive of OGC Buying Solutions, to assist with a specific piece of work involving sub-regional collaboration in Cumbria.

Clare’s contact details are:                   

Email: clare.poulter@ogcbs.gsi.gov.uk

Telephone: 07770 730338

Clare is particularly interested in collaborative procurement and will be making contact with people shortly.

Cheshire Collaborative Procurement Group

The first meeting was held on 31^st August of the Cheshire Collaborative Procurement Group.  Amongst other things it was decided to do an audit of existing purchasing agreements.  A meeting is planned  between Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria later this month to discuss potential wider collaborations in procurement.

Collaboration between the Centres of Excellence

Colin Cram met with Tony Wiltshire, Director of the Yorkshire and Humberside CoE and David Wright, Director of the North East CoE on Friday 26^th August, to discuss how to take forward joint working and link more closely to the Northern Way.  A document setting out proposals for this will be drafted by mid October.

Framework Agreements

The NWCE is moving quickly to develop a catalogue of good quality framework agreements, from a number of potential sources.  Agreements let to various government bodies to which the NWCE could have access need to be identified.  We recently met with the North West Universities Purchasing Consortium to identify which of their agreements can be shared across the North West.  We are also in the process of identifying agreements let by collaborations of local authorities as well as other government departments that may be available to the wider public sector.

We are very interested in making use of agreements that local authorities currently use. If your authority is using purchasing agreements that may be able to be made available to other local authorities across the region for any commodity or service, we would be very interested in hearing about them.  Please forward any information to Olly at the Centre (olly.baker@tameside.gov.uk).

Online Recruitment

A meeting was held on 30^th August to discuss the way forward  regarding online recruitment in the North West.  This meeting followed a workshop held in June by the NW Employers Organisation.   Two projects will commence in this area – one focussing on a regional online jobs portal and the other project looking at the national picture.  We will ensure that both projects are closely linked.  NWeGG are to evaluate current provisions and understand the actual and planned extent of online recruitment activity by local authorities across the region, and will make some future recommendations.  As such a short survey, that will take no more than 10 minutes to complete, will be sent to your authorities. Your co-operation in taking the time to answer the questions will be appreciated. 

Should have any queries, or would like further information please contact either Miranda (miranda.carruthers-watt@tameside.gov.uk) or Olly (olly.baker@tameside.gov.uk) at the Centre.

North West Improvement Network

Colin Cram and Miranda Carruthers-Watt met Dennis Artess of NWIN on Tuesday 30^th August to agree a process for working closely together.  All parties found the meeting very positive.