Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to promote local authority sub-contracting to small local businesses.

The Government is committed to ensuring there is a simple and consistent approach to procurement across the whole public sector, including local authorities, so that small local businesses can gain better and more access to public sector contracts – either directly or sub-contracted.

New reforms included in the Public Contract Regulations 2015 aim to make public contracts more accessible to businesses and in particular to small and medium enterprises. The reforms included the abolition of the pre-qualification questionnaire for low value tenders; advertising all contracts on Contracts Finder; and paying down the supplier chain in 30 days.

Alongside these reforms we continue to work with the sector, the Local Government Association and the Crown Commercial Service to identify further ways to remove excessive burdens on small businesses and make the public sector procurement process faster, more transparent and less bureaucratic.