IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v42y2016i3p464-484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is local authority procurement supporting SMEs? An analysis of practice in English local authorities

Author

Listed:
  • Kim Loader

Abstract

The UK coalition government wishes to improve the access of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to public procurement, in recognition of their importance to the economy and for the benefits they can bring to public procurement and the wider public sector. Local government provides a significant opportunity for small firms, spending £84 billion of the total procurement spend of £230 billion. However, about two-thirds of both small businesses and local authorities think that SMEs face barriers in successfully accessing public procurement. This paper examines how councils are supporting SMEs in the procurement process by analysing 67 entry forms to the ‘Best Councils to do business with’ competition. This unique data source has provided insight into councils’ attitudes and procurement practices, and demonstrates that although a wide range of supportive actions are being employed there is considerable diversity across councils. Ambiguities and tensions in policies, between local and central government, have also emerged.

Suggested Citation

  • Kim Loader, 2016. "Is local authority procurement supporting SMEs? An analysis of practice in English local authorities," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 464-484, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:42:y:2016:i:3:p:464-484
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2016.1157068
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2016.1157068
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2016.1157068?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kim Loader, 2018. "Small- and medium-sized enterprises and public procurement: A review of the UK coalition government's policies and their impact," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(1), pages 47-66, February.
    2. Tammi, Timo & Saastamoinen, Jani & Reijonen, Helen, 2020. "Public procurement as a vehicle of innovation – What does the inverted-U relationship between competition and innovativeness tell us?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    3. Arash Kordestani & Setayesh Sattari & Kaveh Peighambari & Pejvak Oghazi, 2017. "Exclude Me Not: The Untold Story of Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Sweden," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-22, September.
    4. Michal Plaček & Martin Schmidt & František Ochrana & Milan Půček, 2019. "Factors Affecting the Length of Procedure in Public Procurement: The Case of the Czech Republic," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2019(3), pages 313-329.
    5. Hanspach, Philip, 2023. "The home bias in procurement. Cross-border procurement of medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:42:y:2016:i:3:p:464-484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/flgs .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.