Framework Agreements

Your Input

Full members have voting rights to elect and join LUPC's Board and Executive Committee, ensuring we offer an organisation which is truly owned by our members, for our members.

LUPC is in regular contact with its full members to invite them to meet and discuss either specific category or framework areas of interest to them, or to advise on how to make the most of LUPC membership.

Members can contact anyone on the LUPC team, at any time, should they require assistance. If members wish to raise an issue at Executive Committee level, they can do so by contacting any of the Executive Committee members found on the governance page of our website.

Category Groups

LUPC’s Category and Framework groups bring together members from procurement and technical professions with a special interest or expertise in specific goods or services.

The groups are key to managing relationships with suppliers on behalf of the consortium and reviewing supplier performance throughout the life of a framework agreement.

Details of our Category Groups, including how to join, can be found here.

Some categories are managed nationally or inter-regionally in collaboration with other purchasing consortia. These may be supported by national working parties or category groups in our partner consortia.

Tender Working Parties (TWPs)

Members are at the heart of all LUPC’s activities and are consulted on the shape and delivery of all framework agreements before tendering.

LUPC invites members to join relevant Framework Tender Working Parties (TWPs) which often have cross-over with the Category Groups.  A TWP provides input and supports the delivery of our framework agreements. Individuals involved play a key role in ensuring the delivery of efficient and effective contracts which meet the needs of our membership.  They are usually a mixture of consortia staff, member organisation’s procurement professionals and technical or specialist representatives.

The TWPs identify member need, compile specifications and submit sourcing strategies to our Executive Committee for approval. Often this will involve drafting tender documentation and evaluating tender submissions from suppliers. Usually chaired by a member representative, each group is supported by one of LUPC’s senior category managers.

From personal development to advantages for the organisation and suppliers, this document, developed by UK Universities Purchasing Consortia (UKUPC), sets out the benefits to you of participating in TWPs and explains our promise to professionally support and deliver effective working groups. 

Credit Safe

Available to full members of LUPC

Access to creditsafe is included in LUPC membership for all full members at no additional cost. With many members undertaking credit referencing using various techniques and suppliers, this offering aims to provide an online, fast and consolidated means of accessing this information in order to reduce business risk, while saving considerable expense against any present systems in operation.

The Creditsafe package provides the following main features:

1. Access to detailed company reports at any time
2. Organisation of 'tracked' suppliers into portfolios aligned to framework agreements or commodity areas
3. Receipt of email alerts every time a supplier in any portfolio has a change in their report
4. Control of which personnel receive the e-mail alert, by portfolio
5. No additional costs except on request of an international report, which will be on a 'pay as you go' basis.

The agreement with Creditsafe incorporates searches for International organisations however some of these may be chargeable. In order to manage this effectively, access to chargeable searches can only be requested through the NEUPC office. For further information, or to request a chargeable international search, please contact creditsafe@neupc.ac.uk

Creditsafe Support

For details on using credit safe, please review the Buyers Guide on the Hunter Buyers Portal.

For any account changes, including requesting a new account, please contact Roy Dennis.

In the event that you experience issues with accessing your LUPC Creditsafe account you can now request support directly via premier.support@creditsafeuk.com or 0800 028 4124.

Spend Analysis

Spend Analysis Tool (Contract Uptake)

LUPC is using the spend analysis tool developed by APUC to manage and categorise member organisation spend data. As well as using the tool to deliver LUPC's own Member Benefits Reports to members, LUPC is now able to offer all members this tool for free, to investigate spend directly within their organisations. Please note, this offer is only available to members who commit to sending LUPC their full spend data, which is normally requested in September.

Members who submit their spend are provided with a unique personal login to access the tool at cu.esolutions.org.uk. If you require any additional logins, for example due to a change in staff, please contact our data analyst.

Member benefits include:

1. Online analysis and increased visibility into spend
2. Unique personal login
3. Excellent reporting tool using features such as graphs and filters
4. Identify spend with SMEs
5. Access to up-to-date supplier MI for regular auditing of spend reporting
6. Accurate on/off contract spend (using supplier MI)
7. Category analysis of spend
8. Contract compliance with member’s own contracts and new contract opportunities
9. Calculate ‘typical’ savings to be gained by redirecting spend through LUPC framework agreements

Support is available. For further information, please contact our data analyst.

Annual Scope 3 carbon emissions report: Using member spend data, we provide members with a report to help quantify your performance in this area of sustainability.

Electronics Watch

All full members of LUPC are automatically affiliated to Electronics Watch, the independent monitoring organisation which aims to help public sector organisations work together to meet their responsibility to protect the labour rights and safety of workers in global electronics supply chains more effectively than any single public buyer could accomplish on its own. Your affiliated membership provides you with access to guidance, resources and contract clauses that support responsible procurement, all at no additional cost. For further information, please contact our responsible procurement lead.

Achilles THEMis

A free subscription for full members to Achilles’ THEMiS, a web-based platform offering access to advice and documentation from Achilles’ experts in regulated procurement. This benefit saves each member £550 per annum. *One login only per member. You can learn about all the tools, features and benefits of THEMiS in this recording. Contact Jennifer.Smith@achilles.com for login information.

Procurement Maturity Assessment

A Procurement Maturity Assessment (PMA+) is an independent detailed assessment of your procurement function and provides you with a bespoke action plan for improvement, a baseline to measure improvements, as well as benchmark scores against similar organisations.

What will a PMA+ help you do?

• Elevate the importance of procurement efficiency and effectiveness to your senior executive team.
• Make use of valuable reporting insights to show improvement over time, your position in the sector, and a clear improvement pathway.
• Drive qualitative input and engage with senior stakeholders including Finance Directors and decision-makers behind major purchases in Estates, ICT, HR and all key areas of spend.
• Provide your Audit Committee with the assurance that your institution is meeting sector benchmarks and performing both effectively and efficiently.
• Demonstrate to the Office for Students that procurement best practice is delivering value to your institution and its beneficiaries including improving the focus on ethical and responsible procurement.
• Save time with a streamlined question set and Office 365 evidence submission platform that improves the process without compromising rigour.

If you would like to know how the PMA+ can help your organisation, get in touch with SUPC’s team of experts here. 

Ensemble Purchasing, Shared Procurement Service

An innovative, collaborative solution to procurement resourcing, led by and for our members.

Our shared procurement service, Ensemble Purchasing, has been operating since 2016.

Ensemble offers a complete, longer-term, shared procurement service to our members and was created to address the need for a professional, quality procurement resource within smaller organisations.

The current participating members are The Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, Regents University, Ravensbourne University, The University of Roehampton, The Royal College of Anaesthetists and LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art). The service is owned and managed by its participating members, who each hold a seat on Ensemble's Board.

Good quality procurement professionals are in short supply, even in London. Ensemble supplies a sustainable, high-quality, professional and economical procurement service in the city at less than £350 a day. As it’s a cost sharing group – owned and controlled by members – there is no VAT to pay.

The Service will be of interest to our smaller members, around 20 of whom each have an annual procurement spend below £20m and have either very limited professional procurement resource, or none at all.

Ensemble Purchasing offers:

Professional procurement management for areas of spend selected by each member, commensurate with a “superior” specialist procurement organisation

1. Improved supplier relationship management, contract management and risk management
2. Demand management and cost reduction programmes
3. Regular spend and benefits reporting
4. An improved sustainability profile
5. The opportunity to up-skill managers in procurement, contract management and other commercial disciplines
6. Assured continuity of service and freedom from the burden of staffing and managing a stand-alone procurement function at a fraction of the cost
7. A tax-efficient partnership solution

For more information about Ensemble, and how to participate, contact Don Bowman.

Consultancy

LUPC can provide members with competitively priced, professional procurement consultancy services to meet a range of short-term procurement needs for additional procurement strategies and activities outside the scope of our agreement portfolio.

Whether you need to run a tender competition for cleaning or security services, develop your documentation to meet public contract regulations requirements, or purchase a new concert hall organ, our consultants can deliver high-quality outcomes for you, and at a competitive cost.

We offer a wide range of services, from developing procurement strategy and capability and performance improvement to supplementing existing resource to meet short-term and project-based needs. Our consultants offer in-depth practical experience – not just management theory – to deliver savings directly to your bottom line.

This is a chargeable service for our members, albeit at a competitive rate. This comprehensive service can be used for any procurement under our framework agreements; in particular, we can provide a mini-competition service, designed with higher value transactions in mind to ensure your mini-competitions are compliant and deliver best value for money.

For a discussion or quotation, please contact Don Bowman or Bindi Sandhu.

CIPS Study

LUPC has appointed Central Business School to deliver classroom-based or online CIPS courses in Procurement and Supply for members’ staff. The courses are for CIPS levels 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and apprenticeship students running throughout the year, and are available at discounted cost. Students can start courses in September, November, January, March or May. 

Provider: Central Business School

Location: Russell Square WC1 or online via Zoom

Course duration: One year (8 exams)

Course costs

- Apprenticeships Level 4 - Free if you can recover the Apprenticeship Levy

- Level 2 and 3 - £875 + VAT (usually £985 + VAT) for in person and £745 + VAT for virtual learning (usually £845 + VAT)

- Level 4 , 5 and 6 - £1,275 +VAT (usually £,1475 + VAT) for in person and £998 + VAT for virtual learning (usually £1,345 + VAT)

CIPS textbooks - the cost varies dependent on the module. LUPC will pay the cost of the books for our full members to support their staff and these will be delivered to their home address. 

Other costs – to be paid by the student or member

CIPS membership– £195, renewal £145 (correct as of September 2024).

CIPS Exams - fees vary depending on the level and the module, please contact your study centre to find out these prices.

Full details on the courses are available here. For more information, you can visit Central Business School's website.

How to register:

To be sent a registration form or to discuss further, please contact David Morton at davidm@centraleduc.com or give him a call him on 07775 906024.
Alternatively, please contact Don Bowman at d.bowman@lupc.ac.uk or call him on 07931 862285.