Following Pauline Kelly raising the apparent inconsistency of Government timber procurement policy with Dennis Walker at the recent meeting with CPA Trade Association Presidents, I met civil servants from BERR’s Construction Unit and DEFRA to explain our concerns in more detail.
The Government’s timber procurement policy was initially formulated as a response to the Greenpeace invasion of the Cabinet Office and other high profile protests. The Timber Trade Federation has lobbied hard to ensure that the policy reflects what the industry can deliver, and by and large, most of those dealing with central government projects are comfortable with it. The problem comes with the fact that it appears that the policy is applied inconsistently across government departments, so that each department appeared to have its own variation. I explained that industry found it very difficult to understand why Government didn’t appear to abide by its own policy.
The problem within Government is that, while there may be a central procurement policy, each department is entitled to set its own procurement rules. So the DEFRA official explained to me that part of his role as the ‘policyholder’ is to meet the procurement managers of all other departments in an effort to persuade them to adopt the central policy. Even if he can get their commitment to adopting the policy, it will also be necessary to get them to adopt a system to monitor its implementation, and there is always a degree of reluctance to accept one more report without the pressure of an impending National Audit Office investigation. It was relatively easy to achieve compliance on big projects, where it could be incorporated into the overall project plan, but harder on adhoc purchases.
There are a series of targets for the Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (acronym SOGE – pronounced ‘soggy