Procurement - the formal process of going out to a range of providers to see if they can deliver the services we want at the price we want - is one of the options we have when we consider how to implement the service redesign projects that we undertake - this is often referred to as Route to Market.

In order to make sure any procurements that we do are open and clear to all we have a variety of documents to help us do this

• Procurement Policy - this provides the Programme framework we need to deliver our procurement processes to the level we want to
   
• Sustainable Procurement framework - this supports us in ensuring we are considering sustainability of the service, the local economy, the wider environment when we go out to procure
   
• Procurement Planner - in order to make sure we, and our partners, are aware of our likely plans to procure a service we produce a planner which indicates those areas where a formal procurement us being considered - it does not guarantee that a procurement will happen because as we review services other options may become available to us which may be a better way of getting a quality service.
   
• ERY Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Contracts – this provides details of the current CCG contracts including the provider, the service description, value and term of the contract and how it was procured.

• Involving patients and the public in procurement – we routinely involve patient representatives in our procurement activity which includes full training and support.  Recent examples include Extending Access to Primary Care and Non Emergency Patient Transport Services.