Common Purpose Invitations To Tender and Qualifications

John Walker made this Freedom of Information request to Norwich City Council

The request was partially successful.

From: John Walker

14 August 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

Norwich Council has spent money on Common Purpose courses:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...

Please can you provide the
following information with regards to Common Purpose courses
undertaken by your staff since 1997:

1. Details of the competitive tendering process and, where
applicable, durations of service contracts you have entered into
with Common Purpose.

2. Identities of submitters of rival bids to
provide leadership courses and details of the quotations they gave.

3. Copies of text of invitations to tender which Common Purpose
submitted tenders to your organisation in response to and in which
publications these invitations to tender were advertised.

4. Evidence submitted to your organisation by Common Purpose
demonstrating they have the competence and expertise to provide the
services they offer, qualifications of all of their trainers who
have delivered courses to your staff and evidence submitted to you
by Common Purpose of their industry accreditations or
certifications and quality assurance processes.

5. Details of the
nature and content of Common Purpose courses undertaken by your
staff.

6. Criteria used to select Common Purpose against other
bidders and evidence these criteria were applied properly and
fairly.

7. Findings of any audits conducted by or on behalf of your
organisation into Common Purpose operations.

8. If competitive
tendering was not applied to the procurement by your organisation
of services from Common Purpose (which I understand is a legal
requirement for public sector procurement and requiring at least
three bids) please provide an explanation of why procurement rules
were waived.

By 'Common Purpose', I mean the training organisation of that name:
http://www.commonpurpose.org

Yours faithfully,

John Walker

Link to this

From: Crowley, Sara
Norwich City Council

14 August 2009

Dear Mr Walker,

Thank you for your email.

Your request for information is receiving attention. We are making
enquiries to find out if we hold the information, following which we
will write to you further. If we do hold the information and it is not
exempt under the Act, then we will let you know if there is a cost in
making it available.

Yours sincerely

Sara Crowley
Trainee Committee Officer, Democratic Services
Telephone: 01603 212416
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Link to this

stygian left an annotation (14 August 2009)

back-up issues may include:

Please demonstrate the benefit to the ratepayer that have resulted from the training provided.
( It is illegal for a local authority to spend ratepayers' money on activities of no benefit to the ratepayers. It is illegal for a charity to spend money that does not benefit those sections of the community specified in the charity's constitution.
Please demonstrate that the skills obtained from the training were essential for the employee to carry out his / her duties as a civil servant / charity worker.
( This shows the argument that if the training was not vital, the ratepayer should not be saddled with the expense. If the training was vital, then why did the employer not employ someone suitably qualified in the first place.
Please itemise the financial costs to the ratepayer incurred as a result of the activities of the receipients of training in their roles as members of the training organisation, such as attendance at meetings during work time, time spent on training organisation projects, hosting functions, etc.

Link to this

John Walker left an annotation (14 August 2009)

Thank you, stygian.

Link to this

From: Crowley, Sara
Norwich City Council

11 September 2009

Dear Mr Walker,

I am writing in response to your request of 14 August 2009 for information
regarding Common Purpose Invitations to Tender.

It is not possible to provide you with the information you have requested
without undertaking a large amount of additional work and your request
would then exceed the "appropriate limit" as stated in the Freedom of
Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

We can confirm that as part of the HR and Learning projected work
programme, Norwich City Council will be carrying out a skills and
qualification audit and assessment for all employees. This will enable us
to log all learning and development activity undertaken by our employees.
This will include skills and qualifications acquired with the council's
support as well as those acquired prior to employment. We would only be
able respond to this request once the audit has been undertaken.

Over the last two/ three years we have been out to tender for a number of
management learning and development initatives. Common purpose have not
however been engaged to provide learning and development services to
Norwich City Council as the result of these tendering exercises.

Where there is a decision corporately to provide a certain type of
training then HR and learning will work without Procurement service to
tender for a provider. We are currently going though a full tendering
process for:

* Challenge based equality and diversity training for front facing
employees,
* Refersher skills for managers,
* Skills development for new managers,
* Employee skills development.

In providing you with this information I would like to draw your attention
to the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005, which came
into force on the 1 July 2005. If you intend to re-use the information
provided, you must contact the Council's Communications Department, as the
Council may wish to place conditions on how this information is used.

Yours sincerely,

Sara Crowley
Trainee Committee Officer, Democratic Services
Telephone: 01603 212416
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Link to this

Things to do with this request

Anyone:
Norwich City Council only: