30 May 2025 
Ashley Shelbrooke, HEPA and Project Specialist
The GHG Measuring and Reporting sub-group to the HEPA Responsible Procurement Group are looking to collate user feedback on the HESCET (the Higher Education Supply Chain Emission Tool). The sub-group are keen to understand how HESCET is being utilised across the sector, how the outputs impact university activity and what improvements you would like to see. The questionnaire should take 5-10 minutes to complete, and the results will help shape the future activity of the sub-group. The form is open until Friday 13th June 2025. The results will be anonymised, and analysed results fed back to the sub-group. Please do take the time to complete the HESCET Questionnaire here: https://forms.office.com/e/sWdS9nXY2e
A reminder that you can find out more about recent developments in the GHG Measurement & Reporting sub-group here.
Under Section 70 of the Procurement Act, in scope contracting authorities will be required to publish information on payments over £30,000 made under public contracts. This data must be published quarterly, within 30 days of each quarter’s end, on the central digital platform.
The Cabinet Office are inviting three HEPA and BUFDG members to engage in a digital discovery to help shape both the digital design and the supporting secondary legislation, in particular to help them understand:
In terms of the resource commitment required for this digital discovery, this would be to meet with the Cabinet Office digital team for a one hour long session and potentially some follow up email exchanges. Exact timescales are TBC but this discovery is envisaged to commence from mid-June.
Are you a finance system specialist or a contract / data manager? Do you understand how systems integrate? Have you insight into reporting and compliance processes within procurement and finance? If so, and you would like to nominate yourself of a colleague to represent the sector, please do let me know. Please also let me know what systems you use, in order for us to ensure that a representative sample of the systems used across our sector are covered. By participating, sector nominees will help to ensure that any new requirements are proportionate, technically deliverable, and aligned with how the university sector works in practice. This is an opportunity to shape how the system is designed to minimise burden and maximise impact.
The Cabinet Office have recently updated / published a series of Procurement Policy Notes (PPNs) – you can find out all of the relevant information on the HEPA website here. This update includes Using Standard Contracts, Guidance on Data Protection Legislation and Payment Spot-Checks in Public Sub-Contracts.
A reminder that the National Security Grounds - Exclusions Annex 2 guidance has been published and is available to read on gov.uk here.
The Standard Contracts Policy Team in the Cabinet Office are pleased to offer further training to help members understand how to use the suite of Cabinet Office contracts, and the latest updates to these. HEPA members can register for the sessions, which take place online, via the links below:
The Procurement Value Survey (PVS) Results Report for the Financial Year 2023/24 was released earlier this month and is available to download here. A total of 76 responses were received from members. The total impactable spend was £8.3bn, with total gross efficiencies of £354m.
As always, if you have any feedback on the PVS – in particular how it could better meet your needs, then please do let me know. Your thoughts would be incredibly helpful as we look to make the PVS as useful as possible for those across the sector.
As part of the Mediate project, the HIVA research institute of KU Leuven is conducting research on responsible public procurement. The research looks at opportunities and pitfalls for public buyers in enforcing due diligence in procurement. It aims to map and analyse experiences of public buyers with integrating human rights requirements (through HRDD) into their procurement processes. To gather data for this study, they have launched a short survey to document public buyers’ experiences with HRDD. It is expected to take 15-20 mins to complete. Many thanks to all the members who have already completed the survey; if you have not yet done so then you can follow the link to submit your response by close of business today: https://websurvey.hiva.kuleuven.cloud/212381?lang=en . We will obtain a copy of the completed survey data / outcomes and make it available to members.
Following the introduction of the Procurement Act 2023 in February 2025, the Cabinet Office are running a stakeholder survey to test awareness and understanding of the new procurement regime. The survey will enable the Cabinet Office to gather valuable insight to inform the development of the Transforming Public Procurement programme, help measure the impact of the programme over time, and to help the team to target their communications. The programme team would be grateful if HEPA members could spare a few minutes to complete the survey which you can access here: https://crowncommercial.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0lJ2QGNPzqZvHAG . The survey is entirely anonymous so your views will not be attributable - it will remain open until 2 June 2025.
Finally, many thanks to all who completed the recent Innovation Procurement survey. We look forward to sharing the results with you once they have ben analysed by Innovate UK and the team.
