How mission-driven procurement powers Wigan Council's policy goals

Public procurement has long been perceived as a transactional function governed by regulation, process and compliance. Yet in today's local government landscape, procurement has evolved into something far more strategic – a powerful lever for social, environmental and economic transformation.

Grounded in the principles of the Procurement Act 2023 and aligned with Wigan Council's mission-driven approach, procurement is no longer simply about buying well – it is about building the borough we want.

Procurement has become a direct tool for the council to create community impact, strengthen local resilience, support sustainability and increase engagement and collaboration with local small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The goal is to use the supply chains we build to drive genuine, monitorable, positive change for the borough. That means deliberately focusing procurement activity on local inequalities and aligning tendering and contract management practices with the council's core missions.

In line with the spirit of the National Procurement Policy Statement, the procurement team's approach aims to be ambitious but proportionate, targeting high-impact policy goals without shutting out the businesses best positioned to deliver them.

Wigan Council's procurement team has successfully implemented a six-step plan to:

1. understand current state of affairs
2. ensure procurement team is not on its own
3. early supplier engagement and market-shaping
4. make it easier to bid for council contracts
5. make it easier to manage council contracts
6. reserve 'below-threshold' contracts for local SMEs and VCFSEs.

This article explores how the plan ensures compliance with procurement legislation while also creating more opportunities for local businesses and a better experience for the community.

Using data from providers such as Tussell, the team benchmarks local spending levels. Nationally, approximately £81bn of local authority expenditure goes to suppliers each year, with 43% going to local suppliers as of August 2025.

In contrast, 57% of Wigan Council's procurement budget is spent locally, which is the result of a proactive policy of seeking out local suppliers in the spirit of community wealth building.

Understanding Wigan's own position has enabled targeted interventions to raise local participation further.

A recent restructure has brought the procurement team, the business engagement team and the communities team under the same management. This integration has created greater cohesion across teams, which allows for:

• improved engagement with local businesses
• earlier, stronger market conversations
• support for community-linked suppliers
• a unified approach to local economic growth.

This is the beginning of our journey to galvanise a strong business community, working with energised sectors keen to play their part through a number of initiatives.

The procurement team engages with the local business consortium meetings, where good and occasionally bad public procurement experiences are shared. This creates a direct link to our local strategic suppliers who are committed to the success of the borough.

In addition, the business engagement team manages recognition schemes such as the Good Trader Scheme and the Believe in Business Charter.

These schemes play a part in contributing to a stronger, more confident local marketplace, which the procurement team utilises.

These steps demonstrate that procurement is not just about competition – it can facilitate partnership, visibility and shared ambition.

• co-production sessions with suppliers
• early briefings on pipelines and objectives
• transparent explanation of intended commercial models
• open Q&A and post-session surveys.

These steps were successfully implemented by the procurement team on two recent projects, one involving repairs and maintenance (R&M) for our social housing properties and the other a new hospitality offering at Haigh Hall, a Grade II listed building.

By engaging R&M suppliers at an earlier stage than normal, the procurement team gathered valuable feedback from the local supply chain.

This enabled the council to review its proposed operating model and introduce updates where necessary, ultimately delivering better results for the local communities.

However, I want to be clear – procurement strategies should not be designed in isolation within the four walls of Town Hall.

Suppliers are essential partners in shaping supply chains that succeed for the borough's residents and to achieve one of Wigan Council's key strategic goals, to 'make all our towns and neighbourhoods flourish for those who live and work in them'.

• clearer, shorter tender documentation
• accessible evaluation methods
• straightforward contract management expectations and
• training, guidance and capacity-building for bidders.

Local suppliers often deliver nuanced, high-quality services grounded in our borough, driven by the fact that the people they support are their neighbours, friends or local community members.

Removing unnecessary complexity gives them the confidence to participate in public tendering opportunities, thus giving fair opportunities for residents and businesses, in line with Wigan Council's strategic aims.

We recognise that we can build a great procurement story by potentially awarding more contracts to local suppliers, including SMEs and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprises.

However, this is only half of the story. The other half is successful contract management and collective commitment to shared values, building relationships and working in partnership to positively contribute to the borough.

For example, a public contracting authority may offer more contracts to local SMEs but overburden such SMEs with an unexpected, increased workload. 

The quality of service may decrease due to this scope creep and result in the failure of a contract, ultimately undermining the council's goals. This is a situation we want to avoid.

Wigan Council recently set up an impact and accountability group, which consists of key contract managers from the various directorates.

The group provides a platform to review contracts in order to ensure they are proportionate to our supplier base. This is fundamental to supply chain resilience and strong contract management and is good ethical practice in general.

The group also looks at the council's purchasing behaviours for both above- and below-threshold contracts as defined in the Procurement Act.

Under new public procurement legislation, councils can now reserve certain below-threshold competitions for specific supplier groups.

This can be transformative for:

• small, local firms
• new entrants
• social enterprises and
• community-based organisations.

While this option has been available to the wider public sector for years, local authorities have been unable to use it until the introduction of The Local Government (Exclusion of Non‑commercial Considerations) (England) Order 2026.

The potential for levelling the playing field is significant, and Wigan Council's procurement team uses this option where feasible.

To conclude, by consciously designing supply chains that uplift local communities, build resilience and address the borough's inequalities, the procurement team has embedded measurable policy goals into every stage of procurement and contract management.

This approach is both replicable and necessary. Other local authorities are now challenged to move beyond transactional procurement and embrace more collaborative, place‑based models that consciously use public spend as a lever for social and economic change.

The question isn't if councils can do this but if they are willing to redesign procurement to enable outcomes that genuinely make their towns and neighbourhoods flourish for those that live and work in them.