Slough Borough Council: Selling to the council

Selling to the council

Slough Borough Council is keen to ensure that its suppliers reflect the area’s diversity and encourage as many businesses as possible to apply for our contracts.

The council encourages competition and welcomes bids from new, as well as established suppliers. We have listened to the concerns local businesses, small medium enterprises (SMEs) and Black and minority enterprises (BMEs) face, firstly in trying to find out about business opportunities and secondly trying to fill in the necessary documentation to bid for the opportunities. To help reduce these types of problems occurring, we’ve introduced a new corporate procurement function.

The corporate procurement unit provides a central co-ordinating and advisory role on all procurement matters to the internal service areas. All procurement in the council will be undertaken in accordance with the procurement code of practice.

We have developed a selling to the council guide tailored for those businesses that have no prior experience or contact with the council as a purchasing organisation and want to know how they can do business with us.

The guide provides businesses with the awareness and knowledge of procurement processes that the council has to follow. There is a dedicated area on this website which lists all the goods, services and works the council will be going out to tender for each year, this can be found below under the More Information header, called Tender Opportunities.

The procurement unit proactively encourages its staff to use a diverse range of suppliers when buying goods and services. We encourage the use of small medium enterprises (SMEs), Black and minority enterprises (BMEs), voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises. We’re in the process of collating lists of these types of organisations and publishing them on our intranet.

There is a South East business portal which allows business to register their company details on. Council staff wanting to purchase goods and services will use the portal to search and select registered suppliers to invite to submit a bid for the goods and services. Further details on the South East Business Portal and how to register on the portal and how it works can be found below.

The council has recently signed up to the SME business concordat. The procurement unit works closely with the economic development unit to deliver workshops to ensure suppliers have the right skills to pitch their businesses at ‘meet the buyer’ events which take place throughout the year and win contracts with private and public sector organisations.

Below, you can also, view the Standard Terms and Conditions and read about Selling to the Council and view its Frequently Asked Questions.