The Greater London Authority is a strategic regional authority, with powers over transport, policing, economic development and fire and emergency planning. The GLA Group spends around £11billion on its procurement activities every year.
 | 8.5m Population |
| 12bn Annual spend |
| 78k Employees |
Tim Rudin
Head of GLA Group Responsible Procurement Team
More information? Email procurement@iclei.org
For the GLA Group, responsible procurement means pioneering socially, environmentally and economically sustainable procurement to deliver improved quality of life and better value for money. It involves working in partnership across London to provide sustained employment opportunities and improve working conditions. It means opening up access to contract opportunities for London’s diverse businesses, and voluntary and community sector organisations, encouraging improved practices with our suppliers and promoting greater environmental sustainability to make London a better place to live and work.
Through the GLA Group’s extensive public procurement of products and services, the GLA Group Responsible Procurement Policy is designed to deliver lasting positive change. This will be achieved by:
In order to implement and prioritise the key themes of the policy, the GLA Group Central Responsible Procurement Team has published a Responsible Procurement Implementation Plan. The plan sets out the ambitions and key actions that the GLA Group Functional Bodies will prioritise to deliver the Responsible Procurement Policy. These are shared by and implemented across the Functional Bodies and cover a number of key policy areas.
The plan also outlines a number of metrics to track the delivery of social value through the implementation of the Responsible Procurement Policy. Metrics are reviewed on a quarterly and annual basis with Functional Bodies meeting at the quarterly forum to share best practice and challenges to support collaborative delivery of the Policy.
TRANSPORT FOR LONDONTransport for London (TfL) is the integrated transport authority responsible for delivering Mayor of London Sadiq Khan's strategy and commitments on transport. We run the day-to-day operation of the Capital's public transport network and manage London's main roads. Every day more than 31 million journeys are made across our network. We do all we can to keep the city moving, working and growing and to make life in our city better.
To ensure value for money and enable Londoners to benefit from TfL spend, key suppliers are required to make employment, skills and training opportunities more accessible to the communities they serve. Since 2009, Transport for London (TfL) has worked in partnership with suppliers to provide opportunities to people from a range of backgrounds, while also ensuring the deliverability of its future business plan. TfL has helped to create 5,500 supply chain apprenticeship starts and over 5,000 workless job starts, while 150 ex-offenders have been supported into employment.
With more than 43,000 officers and staff, MPS is the UK’s largest Police Service accounting for 25% of the total police budget for England and Wales. MPS direct procurement spend exceeds £700m annually.
As a significant purchaser of goods and services, the MPS has the potential to generate considerable social and environmental impacts both directly and indirectly through our procurement activities and the supply chain. The MPS continues to minimise the impacts of its procurement decisions through the adoption of social, environmental and economically responsible procurement processes which also have the opportunity to deliver greater value for money.
The MPS has increased the opportunities available to Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through our procurement processes. This includes faster payment to ensure financial support with 86% of all payments being received within 10 days. The MPS continues to use CompeteFor which is a portal to engage with SME’s specifically for MPS procurement opportunities under £50,000.
The MPS supports the Mayor of London’s ambitions to enable skills training and employment opportunities by supporting apprentices. The MPS employed a number within the supply chain to carry out various roles including grounds maintenance, construction, mechanical and electrical engineering, electronic security and control room system contracts. In addition, 100% of the Facilities Management supply chain who work on the MPS contract for more than 50% of their time receive the London Living Wage.
A number of contracts have been let recently with the inclusion of specific environmental considerations. These include an ICT supply contract with requirements to reduce impacts associated with the manufacture, transportation or delivery of products including waste minimisation, energy efficiency and carbon reduction.
The MPS’s contract for catering services includes requirements for seasonal and locally sourced produce, waste and carbon reduction opportunities, animal welfare and sustainability standards and Fairtrade items. A food waste trial has been implemented in partnership with the contractor to reduce the amount of compostable waste being sent to landfill.
Other contracts include Fleet Managed Services, Facilities Management and intermediate construction works, which include key responsible procurement requirements including apprenticeships and training, ethical sourcing, sustainable travel plans, waste reduction and reuse and carbon management.
An example of supplier engagement activity is the Facilities Management Sustainability Forum was delivered to contract managers, managing directors and environmental leads of the supply chain in December 2016. The event allowed the suppliers, MPS environment leads and KBR (FM Integrator service manager) to share best practice and gain further insight into the sustainability elements of the FM contract. It also gave the supply chain a platform to promote sustainability successes through the first FM Supply Chain Sustainability Awards.
London Fire Brigade is the UK capital’s fire and rescue service - one of the largest firefighting and rescue organisations in the world. The Brigade spends around £230m each year on a wide range of goods, services and works and aims to deliver improvements right across the sustainability agenda. Work in this area includes continuing to pay some 180 contractors’ staff the London Living Wage; and delivering 109 job starts and 22 apprenticeships over the past 5 years.
In 2016, LFB awarded a contract to replace 100 % of our fleet cars with electric vehicles, with the vehicles being rolled out over the course of that year. As a result, sixty-six diesel ‘blue lighted’ pool cars were replaced with fifty-two range extender electric BMW i3 vehicles, and 5 plug-in hybrid cars. 
Given the specialist nature of our vehicles, our supplier needed to devise a range of innovative solutions in order to meet our needs. Solutions were identified through close working to ensure there was a clear understanding of our requirements and that the solutions would meet rigorous testing.
As an emergency service the performance of our vehicles is paramount. We tested various models of electric vehicles over several years to ensure the technology met our needs before incorporating them into our emergency response. As one the of first organisations to replace all our fleet cars with electric vehicles, they were relatively new not only to us but also our fleet maintenance supplier, requiring close working right across our vehicle supply chain to ensure success through the procurement process and in use.
Our pre-introduction research indicated that electric vehicles would be cost neutral over their life on a whole-life-cost basis and after eight months of use, suggest that these vehicles will save some 93% of fuel consumption. The new i3 consumes just 42 litres of petrol per year, compared to the 620 litres consumed by each of the older diesel models. This will result in an estimated annual reduction of 84 tonnes of carbon emitted, and 96% lower NOx emissions.
The Mayor of London oversees two Development Corporations that are Functional Bodies in the GLA Group.
London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC)’s purpose is to use the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of the London 2012 Games and the creation of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to develop a dynamic new heart for east London, creating opportunities for local people and driving innovation and growth in London and the UK.
Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC)’s vision is to create and deliver London homes and jobs to facilitate London’s growth and enhance London’s competitive position in the global economy, capitalising on major national transport infrastructure investment at Old Oak Common in north-west London.
Their approach to procurement encompasses sustainability commitments in water management and conservation, energy conservation and carbon reduction, materials selection, waste management, transport, biodiversity and sustainable lifestyles right across their new construction, venues, parklands and events.
In 2015, TfL sought to reduce the whole life-cycle cost of lighting the London Underground network. The procurement calculated external costs including installation, maintenance, energy use, carbon and cleaning costs. Indicative results suggest a 25% saving on whole life-cycle costs, and significant reductions in energy consumption. This was the Procura+ Award winning tender in 2016 for Innovation Procurement of the Year.
While providing uniform fit for a world class transport system, TfL is actively ensuring that workers producing the garments are treated fairly, wherever they may be in the world. All the factories – in Bangladesh and in China - where the garments are being made are subject to an extensive, independent, third party social audit regime, both before production began and on a regular basis throughout the contract term. TfL also worked closely with the Fairtrade Foundation to ensure that the cotton used in the uniforms is sourced from certified producers, meaning that farmers and workers get a fair deal for their work. This was another first in the UK for a public sector organisation. The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) has adjudged TfL to be making solid progress with its ethical sourcing programme with some notable improvements.
For further information on the activities of GLA visit their website:
or email procurement@iclei.org
