EU law is not such a big obstacle for us

Philip Heath’s article on EU Law (All’s fair under EU law, Inside Housing, 28 May) is dead right in making local authorities and social housing providers aware of what you can and can’t do in offering tenders for public works. Yet it also reveals how little public procurement is understood.

The Audit Commission states that 70 per cent of local authorities have difficulties with public procurement, even though more than 50 per cent of local government expenditure goes to external providers.

All too often, the Official Journal of the European Union process is used to justify a lack of creative thinking in public procurement, for example taking the safe option of awarding a contract to a large, well-known supplier, rather than a smaller, local firm (which would be better placed to deliver greater social and economic benefits to the area where the contract is delivered).

EU law is certainly rigorous and needs to be fully understood, but it is far from being the obstacle that many imagine.

If social and economic benefits are treated as an integral part of a contract and that is made clear from the start, it is perfectly possible for them to be treated as key performance indicators in awarding the contract.

At a time when cash is tight, it is imperative that public procurement is used far more effectively, if those organisations with buying power are also being charged with delivering such additional targets as more apprenticeships and mechanisms to empower communities.

Guy Lawson, director, CfM Partnerships