Dr Andrew Povey, leader of the council announced, in March 2010, our commitment to publish details of goods and supplies purchased by the county council with a value over £500.

Dr Povey said: "I am determined to be open and up-front with people and it is only right that local taxpayers should know this information.

Our residents should be confident that they receive maximum value for money from the county council and without us being transparent about these costs by opening up the books they won't be."

Over the last financial year our Procurement team have worked with our services and contractors to deliver £10 million in cashable savings.

£10 million saving achieved in 2009 - 2010

The £10 million cashable savings in 2009-2010 have been acheived across all our services. Some of the top projects that helped to deliver the £10m savings are:

• £2m from highways-related projects where the Highways team worked collaboratively with us to benchmark and improve the value and quality we get from our highways contracts.
• £1.8m of savings in Home-based Care, where Procurement and the Adults Social Care Service has been able to maximise the use of our primary and secondary provider contracts which deliver the best rates and quality of care.
• £700k so far from better procurement of energy, with a further £2.1m of savings due in 2010/11.
• £700k from better rates for temporary and agency staff through the new Manpower contract introduced last April.

Using the data

The first set of data is available here to download as a pdf file and covers spend over £500 for the period April to May 2010.

The data is organised by the type of goods and services we buy, as shown in the Material Group column.

Becoming a supplier

All our tender opportunities are available on our e-sourcing portal. If you are interested in finding out more about our current opportunities take a look at our tenders and contracts page.