Our priorities and key objectives
Our priorities between 2021 and 2025 are:
To provide continuous support and guidance for all procurement and commercial matters, including access to market intelligence to support our business cases and purchasing decisions
We will provide professional expertise, support and guidance for all procurement and commercial matters, providing access to market intelligence to support all our purchasing decisions. Our Category Managers can identify the areas where additional research is needed, sometimes further into the supply chain than who we are immediately buying from.
To provide fit for purpose goods and services available to the front-line
We will work with our subject matter experts in teams to ensure that we buy in fit for purpose goods and services that provide the right level of protection and performance for our end users.
To provide access to innovative products and services to support the evolving and diverse nature of services to our customers
We will provide access to information regarding product development and innovation to help develop our business requirements. Importantly this will mean that what we need can actually be provided by the market. This helps to reduce the research and development costs that suppliers would often need to invest in if they were bidding without understanding our needs more fully.
To consider inclusion and social value impacts and initiatives in all our procurement opportunities
We will promote measures for inclusion and social value initiatives in all our purchasing activities, in a way that is proportionate to the contract size and value, for the benefit of local communities, nationally or internationally.
To continue to be transparent in ongoing and future procurement activity
We are committed to ensuring that we operate with integrity and in an open, fair and transparent way. We will continue to ensure that we publicise contracting opportunities to the open market, which includes our smaller suppliers in our local community, and we will encourage new entrants into the markets we work with.
To continue to support our local community through implementation of the modern slavery policy
We will evidence improvements year on year in terms of how the requirements of the policy are applied and publish a report annually on our website.
The strategy is designed to support the organisation's overall corporate plan, known as the Customer Safety Plan. Our corporate aims are:
- Responding effectively in times of customer need
- Promoting behaviours which help you stay safe and well in your home
- Encouraging you to adopt behaviours which keep you safe on the roads
- Supporting businesses to help people to stay safe in their buildings and comply with legislation
- Helping you and the broader community to stay safe from harm caused by accidents, natural events or people intending harm