Chamber and committees

On that point about the system being difficult to navigate and daunting, the website carries out a customer satisfaction survey, which has found that 60 per cent of the people who took part were either micro or small employers, and that 80 per cent found the website moderately to extremely easy. You say that it is daunting and difficult to manage, but the evidence from 1,600 customers who used the website was the opposite.

I am asking in particular about the Public Contracts Scotland website. My colleagues will ask about other issues.

Thank you.

Before I ask about how we could improve the annual procurement reports, I want to speak with Stacey Dingwall about community wealth building.

In your written evidence, you highlighted two cases: Clackmannanshire Council and Fife Council. I looked at both their procurement reports, which were good. To update you, Fife is now at 49 per cent local spend, as opposed to 22 per cent back in 2010. Does having that level of detail in the procurement report encourage your members to bid when they see that the trend is to increase local spend?

Colin Smith, in your written evidence, you said that not all local authority contracts

“are being reviewed but simply renewed, preventing new bidders or suppliers from getting the opportunity to be listed”.

There is no information in the annual procurement reports about companies that have unsuccessfully bid for a contract. Should that information be contained in the report?

Joanne Davidson, what changes would you like to be made to the procurement reports?

Absolutely.

Is there anything specific that your members would like to see in the procurement reports? Are the reports useful? Would you like there to be changes to them in order to make them more useful to your members?

A one-page summary.

Why do a lot of local authorities not have that level of detail in relation to trend analysis? I have had a look at the reports of two or three others, which will remain nameless at the moment, and there was nothing like the level of detail that is in the Clackmannanshire Council or the Fife Council reports.