29 April 2024 
Ashley Shelbrooke, HEPA and Project Specialist
We are delighted to announce that Cathy Burleigh, Chief Financial Officer at Oxford Brookes University, has been appointed as the new Chair of HEPA; Cathy succeeds Andrew Hewett, Chief Financial Officer at Manchester Metropolitan University, in the role.
Before joining Oxford Brookes University in 2015, Cathy was Deputy Director of Finance at Sheffield Hallam University leading a number of projects to improve efficiency both within the Finance Directorate and across the university. Cathy was also instrumental in designing an integrated planning approach, a new university performance report for use by Executive and Governors, and a new budgetary process.
Cathy began her career in retail, joining Sainsbury's on their graduate training programme after completing her degree at Leeds University. From Sainsbury's Cathy went on to work at Homebase and from there joined the global advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather (part of WPP).
In her role at Oxford Brookes, Cathy provides leadership for the University to ensure financial sustainability, to provide legal services and advice, to manage cash, covenants and loans, oversee capital and estates investment and provide strategic procurement.
HEPA now has a vacancy on the Board for a Deputy Chair. The role should be held by a respected procurement professional with knowledge and experience of the issues affecting the sector; the term of office is 2 years.
The Board meet twice a year, around January and June, and responsibilities of the role include:
Further information, including how to nominate yourself or a peer is available here. The closing date for applications is 3 May 2024. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me should you have any questions.
Following the laying of secondary legislation last month, the Cabinet Office have confirmed that they are working towards a ‘go-live’ date for the new regime of Monday 28 October 2024. This date will be formalised in Commencement Regulations which are expected to be made next month in May 2024, and this announcement marks the beginning of the six month preparation period.
A comprehensive learning & development programme has been launched to help members prepare for the Procurement Act 2023. Comprising 10 x 1-hour modules, the e-Learning covers all aspects of the new reforms, such as key regulation changes, transparency and the competitive flexible procedure. A Government Commercial College (GCC) account is required to access the training, which can be found on Transforming Public Procurement area on the GCC website.
You can find out more about the e-Learning programme on HEPA here, and access the e-Learning package on the GCC here. To help with communications we are pleased to say that a flyer is available for you to utilise on noticeboards, internal comms, newsletters and so on.
The Cabinet Office have shared an update for HEPA members regarding initial tech difficulties / completion issues for the Transforming Public Procurement e-learning. Please find the update on the HEPA discussion board here.
The Cabinet Office have been updating the guidance suite of documents relating to the Procurement Act 2023 over the past few weeks. You can find the complete set of published resources on gov.uk here. The collection includes guidance on Contracting Authority Definition through to the National Procurement Policy Statement and Thresholds; the guidance will continue to be updated with more documents over the coming months.
The Procurement Value Survey (PVS) has been released. The Results Report for the Financial Year 2022/23 shows total impactable spend was £7.8bn, with total gross efficiencies of £326m. You can download a copy of the PVS here.
