Issue - meetings

To consider a proposal to engage consultants to support the Council in instilling a more robust approach to procurement.

The following matter had been deemed a key decision in that it was likely to involve significant savings. The date by which a decision was required had made it impracticable to include the matter on the Forward Plan. The Chairman of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee had been consulted in accordance with paragraph 54.6 of the Executive Arrangements and Cabinet Procedure Rules and had agreed that the making of the decision was urgent and could not reasonably be deferred.

Cabinet considered a proposal to engage consultants to support the Council in instilling a more robust approach to procurement.

Cheshire East Council currently operated a devolved approach to procurement supported by a small Strategic Procurement Team located in the Finance and Business Services Directorate. External Consultants, V4 Services, had been engaged to undertake an external health check of the Procurement activity across the Council. The report summarised V4’s findings and outlined their potential future involvement in helping to address some of the issues highlighted.

RESOLVED

That

(1)  V4 Services be re-engaged to support the Council to instil a more robust approach to procurement in anticipation of significant savings (between £1.85m and £4.5m being achieved on a fixed cost basis (£447k);

(2)  a monitoring process be instituted to ensure that the projected savings are achieved; and

(3)  the normal project management arrangements apply.

Prior to consideration of the next item, the Leader of the Council announced that the Interim Chief Executive, Kim Ryley, would be retiring at the end of the week. On behalf of all those present, the Leader thanked him for doing an excellent job.

The Leader also took the opportunity to introduce the new Chief Executive, Mike Suarez, and the new Interim Borough Solicitor and Monitoring Officer, Suki Binjal.