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Procurement checklist

Steps to take in planning procurement

When you draft the tender, consider whether accessibility and equality, diversity inclusion issues are core requirements.
Consult with purchasers and suppliers to identify any negative, equality, diversity or inclusion impacts of existing services, and to avoid such impacts in new services.
Consider options for constructing the tender so that it best meets accessibility, equality, diversity or inclusion requirements.

The specification should:

identify the specific criteria that a supplier must meet to be awarded the contract;
provide clarity that during the contract duration the organisation will be capable of being verified, monitored and evaluated on its progress;
take account of the specific needs of the purchasers' client group in terms of race, gender, disability, age, sexuality or religion or beliefs.

It may require:

the staff supplying the service to be trained in the cultural sensitivities of purchasers and their potential clients;
monitoring by the ethnicity, gender or disability of purchasersp
steps to be taken as a result of such monitoring, to deal with complaints and to address the needs of actual and potential purchasers;
the supplier to adjust to changes that might have an impact on purchasers over time with race, disability, gender equality implications;
the supplier to take positive action to meet particular needs of purchasers and to improve accessibility;
the purchaser to consider building in resources in the tender to communicate the planned services to diverse groups. For example, this may include employing staff or services which require relevant translation/fluency/ literacy in languages, Braille, provision of information in alternative formats;
it may specify outputs which may improve access to minority, disability, gender, LGBT or religious groups.

If the contract relates directly to equality matters, say so
Indicate the kind of evidence required from the supplier
Consider where best to advertise the tender to ensure that the most diverse range of suppliers are likely to see it. Consider a diverse range of media, eg community-based, locality-based.

When evaluating the tender you may need to:

Take legal advice before seeking to apply any race, gender or disability criterion which is not core to the contract;
Consider seeking further training and guidance before evaluating race, disability, gender, religion, age and sexuality equality questions.

The terms and conditions of the contract may depend on the degree to which the provider promotes equality, diversity and inclusion.
Terms and conditions may need to change during the life of the contract in response to changes in anti-discrimination legislation.

It is important to agree with the supplier the business benefits and their responsibilities for promoting race, disability, gender, age equality performance and monitoring.
Regular monitoring of suppliers' can be on the basis of annual reports produced by them on their equality, diversity and inclusion work.
Take prompt action when performance is below standard.
Consider working with the contractor to make further voluntary steps to promote race, disability, gender, religion, age, sexuality equality.
Feed lessons into further contracts.
To monitor performance on equality and diversity within contracts, protocol partners can use the Law Society Procurement Protocol Scorecard. This is a tool for use by protocol partners which assists purchasers of legal services to monitor the equality and diversity performance against contract.

Existing contracts are covered by anti-discrimination legislation, so they need to be reviewed and, if necessary, updated. Consider:

whether an existing contract already covers the duty to promote race, disability and gender equality;
would there be a significant breach of the new equality duties if the contract continued unchanged;
how long does it have to run;
closer monitoring of race, disability, gender and age equality requirements
negotiating a variation to the contract.