Tarka Learning Partnership wishes to foster positive working relationships with its contractors and suppliers and aims to support local business.

These are the principles that guide how we buy goods, conduct our procurement processes and how we develop our procurement strategies.

Value for Money

• The Trust will aim to achieve value for money in all its procurement activity. This is a combination of whole-life costs and quality to fulfil the requirements of the users of the service, works or goods being procured.
• The Trust will take a long-term strategic view of the procurement and its requirements, including the opportunity for working with other organisations or the use of nationally available framework agreements and the use of purchasing consortiums.

Quality

• The Trust will ensure that procurement and buying habits reflect the need for our duty of care to our staff, pupils and community by ensuring reputable suppliers are used, goods are fit for purpose and do not pose a risk of harm to the user or a hazard risk to the building.

Ethical & Sustainable

• The Trust will aim to minimise harm to the environment and to promote the conservation of natural resources in its procurement & buying practices. Tenders will include a requirement for suppliers to report on their ethical trading, ensuring suppliers also comply with the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Local Supply Base

• The Trust will look to support local business by making it simpler to do business with us by providing opportunities for local business to register their interest and supply their basic credentials via our website. We will have regard to the impact on smaller local companies of the way in which a procurement is structured and use local media to advertise contract opportunities where appropriate.

Equality

• Procurement processes and documentation will reflect the Trust’s Equality & Diversity Policy. Equality issues will be considered a key requirement in any contract or where the contractor is working and acting on the behalf of the Trust.

Non-Discriminatory

• The Trust must ensure that all contractors, suppliers and service providers are treated equally and without discrimination. Processes must not be undertaken in a manner that artificially narrows competition, favours or disadvantages any contractor, supplier or service provider.

Relationship with Suppliers

• Where possible the Trust will incorporate provision for continuous improvement within the contracted service and engage with the supplier to enable this to happen.

Information Governance

• The Trust will ensure that all procurement will have due regard to our duties under the General Data Protection Regulations, particularly in relation to data processing and data sharing.

Our Conduct

• In all our dealings, the Trust will preserve the highest standards of honesty, integrity, impartiality, and objectivity. and shall always comply with the Trusts’ code of conduct, upholding the 7 principles of public life.

To register your interest in becoming an approved supplier for the Trust please fill out the below form. Data will be processed to be in line with the requirements and protections set out in the UK General Data Protection Regulation. Please see our privacy notices for further information. You must be able to provide a copy of your public & employer’s liability insurance to a value of 5m.  Once you have registered and supplied the required documents, a member of the team will be in contact with you.