Study title

These data were generated as part of a fifteen month ESRC-funded research project ‘Optimising Outcomes from Procurement and Partnering for COVID-19 and Beyond: Lessons from the Crisis’ (Nov 2020 – Feb 2022; ESRC ref: ES/V015842/1) examining how local authorities responded to the COVID-19 crisis through their commissioning and procurement. Viewing procurement as a ‘lever’ to optimise outcomes, it examined how this might be strengthened through strategic, entrepreneurial, data-led and relational enablers to deliver both desired outcomes for communities (‘procurement as governance’) and intermediate procurement outcomes (‘governance of procurement’). The study considered all four nations of the UK. Transcripts comprise interviews with stakeholders from local government (n=53), central government (n=14), private sector (n=17), and third sector (n=18). A survey of local government officers (N=205) involved in commissioning and procurement was developed to gather data on the response from local government to the COVID-19 crisis in terms of their procurement activity. Two further surveys (N= 602 and N=212) were developed to gather data on the response from UK local government suppliers to the COVID-19 crisis.‘Optimising Outcomes from Procurement and Partnering for Covid-19 and Beyond: Lessons from the Crisis’ was a 15 month research project (Nov 2020 – Feb 2022) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ref: ES/V015842/1) and carried out by researchers at the Universities of Stirling, Cardiff, Northumbria and Oxford. Public procurement has been firmly in the spotlight during the Covid-19 crisis. Noting claims (IoG,2018) that UK local authorities (LAs) spend around £100bn (or 47% of their total budget) annually on procurement, this study set out to understand how lessons could be learned during the Covid-19 crisis to optimize outcomes from this resource. Ineffective procurement arrangements present risks for the delivery/continuity of public services in...