Contracts and Service Level Agreements are formal agreements, providing funding in return for the delivery of a service or services. They are often multi-year agreements, and are a more formal arrangement than a grant – carrying more specific details about the services to be provided and conditions to be met.
Most contracts are awarded through a competitive tendering process, and larger contracts can entail extremely bureaucratic processes, involving compliance with a raft of EU and UK regulations . The process of purchasing services through competitive tendering for contracts is known as procurement.
Service Level Agreements tend to be less bureaucratic and competitive and are generally used for smaller scale service delivery.
Find out about contracts through:
- local voluntary and community sector networks and publications.
- direct contact with the purchaser such as the government department, local authority, Primary Care Trust, other voluntary and community organisations and businesses. Many of these now make their contract opportunities available on line and you can often sign up to be alerted to those of possible interest to you.
- specialist magazines or local newspaper adverts, including daily supplements to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), where some contracts have to be published.
- inspection reports from organisations, such as the Audit Commission, Commission of Social Care Inspection and Ofsted. These can not only alert you to established contracts, but also help you in drawing up a tender by providing information on how they are performing and the criteria used to measure their performance.
- the official contracts website of the Office of Government Commerce, where tender opportunities are listed.
Trading and providing services under contract accounts for nearly half of the total income of the sector. According to the Institute of Public Finance in 2006, the National Health Service and central government spend around £15 billion a year on service delivery.
