15 January 2013
HM Government has highlighted the importance of collaborative procurement in its annual grant letter to higher education. The letter, from Secretary of State Vince Cable and Universities Minister David Willetts, sets out the allocation of funding for HE in 2013-14 and includes the following statement:
“Under the reformed HE system, students will legitimately want to understand what their fees pay for. This places the onus on institutions to provide clear information and to be able to demonstrate value for the fees charged. There is also a continued requirement for those in receipt of public funding to operate efficiently and deliver value for money. We expect to see quantifiable progress against the Diamond recommendations particularly improvements in collective procurement, benchmarking, energy use and asset utilisation in the sector. We ask the Council to continue to take account of the cross-government drive to deliver ever greater value for public money and ask HEFCE to promote and demonstrate ways in which the sector can deliver increased efficiency.”
Meanwhile Procurement UK, the body established by Universities UK following the Diamond Report, meets for the first time on 6 February, under the chairship of Professor Nick Petford, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Northampton and keynote speaker at the LUPC Conference on 28 February.
Read more about the Diamond Report target and LUPC's '30% campaign'
Read LUPC Director Andy Davies' comments in Supply Management