Business Development

Small Business Friendly Concordat

We have recently signed a procurement concordat. This is to assist the smaller and medium sized companies to do business with the council. These businesses are often key local employers as well as making significant contributors to their local communities.

What is the Small Business Friendly Concordat?

It is a voluntary non-statutory code of practice to make it easier for small and medium sized enterprises to do business with local authorities. Under the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government published in 2003 a range of strategic objectives and targets was set out for councils to adopt to achieve professional, effective and efficient procurement practices.

What does small and medium sized enterprises mean?

Small and medium sized enterprises are those companies with fewer than 249 people (a small firm is defined as one with 0-49 employees and a medium firm as one with 50-249 employees) They are generally locally owned and often employ people from a smaller catchment area than larger competitors.

What do small and medium sized enterprises mean to the economy?

Small and medium sized enterprises accounted for 99.8% of all businesses, 55.6% of employment and 52% of turnover with in the United Kingdom (figures provided by the Federation of Small Businesses).

Small firms can offer real benefits to local authority clients, these may include:

They are often close at hand
They may attach more importance to doing business with a local authority
Offer local solutions
Provide better access to local solutions for hard to reach groups

Building East: Helping small businesses to grow

Building East is aimed at providing small and medium sized enterprises with the skills and capacity to bid for contracts associated both with the development of the Sustainable Communities Plan and with the bid for achieving the Olympics in 2012.

While there is a focus on the built environment, Building East is open to most sectors of the local economy.

The objective of Building East is to assist in the development of successful long lasting business partnerships between local small and medium sized companies and major purchasers whether in the public or private sector.

The Building East project brings together wide range of resources with the aim of capturing as much of the new local construction work as practically possible, by facilitating successful relationships between small and medium sized enterprises and larger companies.

For further information please contact Building East on 020 8223 7413.

Contact

Jo Sinclair

Regeneration Manager - Business and Inward Investment

3rd Floor

Maritime House

1 Linton Road

Barking

IG11 8HG

Tel: 020 8227 5315

Fax: 020 8227 5326

Minicom: 020 8227 5750

Email: jo.sinclair@lbbd.gov.uk|