Integrated Quality and Environmental Policy Statement

Commercial and Procurement Services

Integrated Quality and Environmental Policy Statement

The role of Belfast City Council’s Commercial and Procurement Services (CPS) is to develop and embed a consistent corporate approach to commercial and procurement activity.  We will do this by driving effectiveness, efficiency and improvement of procurement processes and deriving value from all procurements and all income generation opportunities.   

The objective for the council’s commercial and procurement activities is about achieving the best value for money outcome for the ratepayer. Value for money for the council includes delivering on the key economic, environmental and social outcomes set out in the Belfast Agenda and the Corporate Plan.

CPS support and contribute to the success of the Belfast Agenda and corporate vision through the key themes of ensuring compliance, adopting a collaborative and customer focused approach, developing and embedding a corporate approach to commercial and procurement activity and delivering our social value aspirations. 

Belfast City Council (BCC) recognises the actual and potential impact its spend has on the environment, on the local economy, and on the suppliers and communities in Belfast. BCC’s Social Value Procurement Policy outlines the approach that CPS will take to integrate sustainability into the procurement of goods, works and services in order to optimise the economic, social and environmental benefits in line with ISO14001:2015.     

In addition, to accomplish and maintain a high quality of service to meet the need of clients, we have integrated the requirements of ISO 9001: 2015 into our way of working. This provides a framework to continually improve the effectiveness of how we work and the consistency of a quality service to our clients. 

Through the ongoing implementation of the CPS’s Integrated Management System (IMS), we will therefore: 

1. Commit to fulfil all applicable compliance obligations including statutory, stakeholder and industry commitments and agreements.
2. Commit to the delivery of the Social Value Procurement Policy relating to the promotion of environmental sustainability, and to the protection of the environment by preventing or mitigating adverse environmental impacts.
3. Commit to continually improving the unit’s performance through the IMS.
4. Commit to maintain focus and resilience in the face of unprecedented internal and external change.
5. Commit to deriving value for money from third party expenditure and all procurement opportunities.

Key elements of CPS's commitments therefore are:

• Where practicable, we will seek to support BCC in spending money on procuring goods, works and services to the benefit of the people, the communities and the economy of Belfast. 
• To promote environmental sustainability for example supporting reduction in waste and carbon emissions, supporting energy efficiency and promoting and procuring the use of materials from renewable and sustainable sources within the council and our supply chain.
• To support suppliers to identify and integrate sustainable processes and products and enhance their understanding of council sustainability commitments.
• Implement the Social Value Toolkit embedding a process for the identification and integration of sustainability criteria in the selection of suppliers and award of contracts. We will also seek to use this approach to support capacity building and incremental improvement of performance.