Transparency Purchase Orders

The following provides information on Purchase Orders (POs) sent to suppliers for the periods defined for expenditure in excess of £5,000 for the Transparency Code. We have also provided a Summary of information relating to POs.

Purchase Orders: Electronic Purchase Orders are used to clearly define goods or services required by the council during a specified timeframe.

Data has been excluded or redacted from the publication in line with guidance issued by the Local Government Association.

There are occasions when data items have been removed (redacted) for the following reasons:

• Redacted personal data: where the data would identify an individual in the context of their private life.
• Redacted commercial confidentiality: where the release of information could prejudice the conduct of business or was provided in confidence.
• Redacted other: where revealing information would compromise security, health & safety or crime prevention.

The Council manage four distinct processes:

1. Tendering,
2. Awarding a Contract
3. Ordering Goods and Services via a Purchase Order as required
4. Paying an Invoice or awarding a Grant

This means that the same or similar information may be duplicated over datasets published by the Council. An example of this process would be a contract being advertised via an ITT, awarded to a stationery supplier, a purchase order will then be raised to order 200 biros, the goods will be delivered and then an invoice submitted to the Council for payment.

This information will be contained in the ITT declaration, the Contract Register, Purchase Order Information and the Spend Data. It is likely that the values contained in the ITT, Contract Register, Purchase Order data and Spend Data will not reconcile. This is because the timeframe whereby each item of data is captured will be different and actual spend varies over time. For example, the example, the ITT will be the estimated maximum value for the full contract term at the point the contract is advertised, the Contract Register will be the estimated maximum contract value over the full term, Purchase Orders may reflect requirements over a much shorter time or a single “call off” and spend declaration reflects when we pay for the goods and services.

Definitions:

• Contracts: documents evidencing a legally binding agreement between two or more parties. Purchase Orders may be raised against these Contracts.
• Framework agreements: are legally compliant routes to pre selecting suppliers who are able to supply goods and services. Contracts are awarded to bidders when the work is allocated. Such contracts will be listed on the contract register if they are over £5,000 and are classified as “frameworks”.
• Invitations to tender: are open advertisements to the market which represent opportunities for interested parties to express an interest in participating in a competitive procurement process for the supply of goods, services or works.

This data set is provided under the terms of the Open Government Licence

You will see that this licence encourages you to download and re-use our data.  If you have queries with any of the ITTs listed in the data, please contact us at data.protection@trafford.gov.uk specifying the name of the file you are referring to, the unique contract reference, what additional information you require.