A major industry survey examining how the UK public procurement process could be reformed following Brexit has been launched by international law firm Trowers & Hamlins at MIPIM, the world’s leading international property conference in Cannes, France.
The public procurement process is often heavily criticised as time consuming, inefficient and costly, yet it forms the backbone of some of the largest, most complex and valuable developments and regeneration schemes around the country.
With the UK set to leave the European Union, there is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the public procurement process and examine how it could be improved.
Sara Bailey, Trowers & Hamlins, Head of Real Estate, said:
“The procurement survey is important because it should gauge whether there is an appetite to improve procurement processes and if so, how we can look to create something flexible to work efficiently for the largest and most complex development projects. As well as a system that is accessible to and supportive of businesses of all sizes including SMEs.
“Of course there are certain elements that any public procurement system will need to incorporate to encourage confidence that the system is fair, transparent, prevents corruption, achieves value for public money and is conducted on a level playing field.
“This means that competitive tendering and rules about equality of treatment and transparent processes are likely to be a feature of any new system the UK adopts post Brexit.
“However there are some features particular to the EU regulations which are not necessarily universal and Trowers & Hamlins is seeking views from across the industry on how the public procurement system might be improved following Brexit.”
As well as examining what could be improved in the public procurement process, the survey also asks how the process could be adapted to better take into account the long-term benefits and hard to value aspects of development and regeneration, such as design quality, well-being, sustainability, community and culture.
This builds on Trowers & Hamlins' award-winning work to develop a “placemaking valuation” in real estate following the launch of the Highly Valued, Hard to Value report at MIPIM 2016 that enables social, cultural and environmental factors to be measured alongside financial outcomes to determine the success of developments.
