Brent Council is joining forces with two local authorities to buy the services it needs in the hope of saving £8million.
A shared service between Brent, Harrow and Buckinghamshire councils to provide a “Procurement Shared Service” (PPS) was agreed at a cabinet meeting on Monday.
The service will allow the three councils to use their combined buying power to support any purchases which are above an agreed threshold of £164,000.
As part of the deal Harrow Council will run the service for Brent and Buckinghamshire who will transfer their buying activities to staff working there.
The scheme will save five job posts which had previously been earmarked for redundancies, however the roles may be transferred to Harrow Council.
Cllr Michael Pavey, deputy leader of Brent Council, said: “This is the biggest source of savings over next two years and we hope it will generate £8m over two years which is a very serious amount of money.
“At the same time we’ll be bringing forward groundbreaking policy which places social value at the heart of procurement for the first time.
He added: “The proposals in this report will deliver a significant financial saving from our back office but more importantly they will lay the foundations for very substantial saving from contract renegotiations in the coming years.
“Although the three boroughs will share a procurement service, Brent will have our own procurement policy containing our own values.
“It’s not exaggeration to say that over the next year we’re looking at a revolution in procurement in Brent Council.”
A spokesman for Brent Council said: “We’re pooling our procurement staffing resources and expertise between the three councils so as to use our combined buying power to get the best value for all our council tax payers in the way we spend our money buying goods and services.
“In the short term, this will mean that our specialist procurement staff transfer their contracts to Harrow Council on their current terms and conditions, before the process of matching people into roles in the new combined structure.
“Our usual approach within councils is to look to retain the years of experience, expertise and commitment represented in our staff teams, and to manage any such changes minimising costly redundancies.”
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