Cost of living support
Colchester City Council is providing support for residents facing the cost of living crisis.
Colchester City Council is providing support for residents facing the cost of living crisis.
The Council purchases a range of goods and services to support our operations and to deliver high-quality services to local residents, businesses and visitors.
Our procurement processes include:
Procurement Strategy - this includes the definition of initial need; tendering; delivery; invoicing; payment; contract management.
Contract Procedure Rules - these are as shown in part 4 of the Council's Constitution.
the Government's intermediaries legislation, known as IR35 - for the supply of services, including the HMRC online tool to check employment status for tax.
publishing our current list of contracts over £5,000
As a local government authority, we are bound by the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Public sector opportunities that are open to all bidders are advertised on the Contracts Finder website (www.gov.uk/contracts-finder), which includes notices issued by Colchester City Council as well as other public sector bodies across the UK.
We conduct our tender processes electronically using the Delta procurement portal .
To respond to any new contract opportunities issued by the Council, your organisation has to be registered as a supplier on the Delta portal.
Assistance with registration can be provided through the Delta helpdesk.
You can quickly and easily create and submit your bids for all values of contracts including Request for Information (RFI) and Quick Quotes, with the help of the Delta Response Manager.
Each tender or opportunity is advertised separately and has a unique Access Code, which is linked from the contract notice. Tenders may be conducted separately or jointly for the Council, Colchester City Homes, Colchester Amphora Energy Ltd, Colchester Amphora Homes Ltd and Colchester Amphora Trading Ltd.
All contract opportunities are classified using CPV codes. CPV means Common Procurement Vocabulary and is a way for the whole public sector to classify or categorise similar works, goods or services.
You can drill down to find more specific codes under the main headings but it does depend on which level of classification has been used by the contracting authority. You may wish to use the CPV codes to set up alerts through the Delta portal or Contracts Finder to notify you of new opportunities that are relevant to your business.
To find our latest tender opportunities go to Colchester Procurement Portal
The Delta procurement portal can be accessed directly through Delta Portal
Contract notices and tender opportunities are published on Contracts Finder for Colchester Council and other public sector bodies through GOV.UK Find a contract
Where applicable tender opportunities can also be found in OJEU notices on a number of websites.
The Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) is another type of procurement process that we can use to award contracts for works, services and goods and is conducted electronically. As a procurement tool, it has some aspects that are similar to a framework agreement but allows new suppliers to join at any time.
Each DPS has two stages:
Colchester City Council for itself and its wholly-owned bodies have issued contract notices for two separate DPS projects. The titles and link are below:
Each notice, issued through the Delta portal, has a short description of our requirements and a link to click to ‘Register Interest’. Suppliers are then asked to log in or register on Delta to access the documents and questionnaire to apply to join the DPS List. Further information is available in the quick help guide to the DPS.
We use the Social Value Portal for relevant contracts to enable bidders to offer targets against the Colchester TOMs framework of measures.
Bidders will have to register on the Social Value Portal with guidance provided in the tender pack for each project where this applies. For the successful bidder, their social value offer will form part of the contract and be monitored through the SVP.
Social Value Portal
The Procurement Alliance for Essex (PAE) works to promote and facilitate collaborative procurement across Essex.
We have statutory obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, including within Section 54 to ensure that modern slavery does not exist in its supply chain. In July 2018 we also agreed unanimously to adopt and apply the Co-operative Party’s Charter Against Modern Slavery (as far as is legally possible). As part of this Charter, suppliers are reminded that contracted workers are free to join a trade union and are not to be treated unfairly for belonging to one.
All suppliers to us will be asked to confirm that they/their organisation has, and will, take action to address risks to human rights identified within itself and its supply chain. This action is to include the adoption of a whistleblowing policy that enables staff to blow the whistle on any suspected examples of modern slavery. If risks are identified or for more information see the National Referral Mechanism on the link shown below.
All councils are required to publish contracts and tenders for goods and services over £5,000 on a quarterly basis under the Local Government Transparency Code. This information is published as a downloadable CSV file at Council data.