The Royal Borough of Greenwich follows procedures that are appropriate to the value of goods, works and services that we purchase. Here is a guide to the procedures and directives we use.

EU directive on public procurement

Contracts for more than £144,000 of goods and services and more than £3.6 million of works must be advertised in the Official Journal for the European Union. The advertisements have time limits.

Financial limits for our transactions

The Contract Standing Orders document includes our own contract and tenders Standing Orders, to which all budget holders must adhere.

In brief, the following procedure is applied:

• for transactions valued at under £10,000, at least one written quotation must be obtained before a formal purchase order is issued
• for transactions valued at more than £10,000 but less than £25,000, at least two written quotations must be obtained before a formal purchase order is issued
• for transactions valued at more than £25,000 but less than £100,000, at least three written quotations must be obtained before a formal purchase order is issued.

All of the above will be subject to us specifying the supplies, services or works, and setting out prices, terms and conditions of contract and terms of payment.

For transactions valued at over £100,000, a formal tender process must be conducted where no fewer than five competitive tenders must be sought.

Selection of invitations to tender is made at our discretion and may be informed by responses to a public notice (advertisement), by invitation to a number of firms on an approved list or, if there is no approved list, invited from firms that we consider suitable.

Competitive procedures

When we procure goods, works and services we follow competitive procedures unless there are convincing reasons to the contrary.

The form of competition is appropriate to the value and complexity of the goods, works and services we need.

The Royal Borough of Greenwich is aware that it is time consuming and expensive for you to tender, and so we try to invite bidding from the minimum number of companies as stated in EU procurement directives.

While you are compiling your bid you can write to us and ask questions to clarify details. When you do this we will copy your questions and answers to all other bidders, ensuring we do not breach commercial confidentiality in order to be fair to all companies.