Audit and Risk Committee meeting - Paper 3: Geographic location of contracts awarded - 14 November 2025

For inform­a­tion

Title: Geo­graph­ic­al loc­a­tion of con­tracts awar­ded Pre­pared by: Mikko Saari, Pro­cure­ment Officer

Pur­pose This paper provides inform­a­tion on pro­cure­ment activ­ity over the year ended 31 Octo­ber 2025, and in par­tic­u­lar the loc­a­tion of sup­pli­ers who were suc­cess­ful in con­tract­ing with the Park Author­ity. The paper was pre­pared in response to a ques­tion raised by a mem­ber of the Committee.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Note the inform­a­tion provided b) Com­ment on the suit­ab­il­ity of report­ing for their needs.

Con­tracts awarded

1. Over the course of a cal­en­dar year from Octo­ber 2024 to Octo­ber 2025, the Park Author­ity awar­ded 43 con­tracts in total. To com­ply with the Pro­cure­ment Reform Scot­land Act 2014 reg­u­la­tions, 20 of these con­tract notices were advert­ised pub­licly on Pub­lic Con­tracts Scot­land (PCS) via an open com­pet­i­tion to the wider UK-mar­ket to ensure attain­ing a strong num­ber of bids or owing to the estim­ated value of each the con­tracts exceed­ing the £50,000 exclud­ing VAT threshold.

2. Out of the total 43 con­tract notices, 9 con­tract notices val­ued between £10,000- 25,000 were pub­lished via the Quick Quotes portal on PCS to selec­ted ten­der­ers based on their cap­ab­il­ity, expert­ise or pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence in the field. Addi­tion­ally, for two con­tract notices, Scot­tish Government’s / Scot­land Excel’s Frame­work Agree­ments were applied via mini com­pet­i­tions through Quick Quotes invit­ing all the Scot­land Excel approved and pre-vet­ted sup­pli­ers to take part in the tender.

3. Finally, 12 lower value con­tracts were awar­ded based on the res­ults of get­ting a min­im­um of 3 quotes from selec­ted ten­der­ers in the field.

Geo­graph­ic loc­a­tion of suppliers

1. Of the total 43 con­tracts awar­ded, 26 (71%) of the win­ning ten­der­ers are based out­side the park bound­ary, e.g., in Inverness or the cent­ral belt. This is mostly likely due to the fact that the major­ity of the high­er value con­tract notices must be advert­ised UK-wide invit­ing nation­al com­pan­ies to bid, who are usu­ally loc­ated in the major cit­ies. The Park Author­ity seeks to sup­port the loc­al sup­pli­ers with­in and around the park, how­ever, we are also required by legis­la­tion to ensure a fair and equit­able tender pro­cess without dis­tort­ing com­pet­i­tion across all ten­der­ers, regard­less of their geo­graph­ic loc­a­tion, and whilst apply­ing best prac­tice and attain­ing best value for money.

2. 17 sup­pli­ers (29%) are either based in the park (9 sup­pli­ers) or around the park (8), e.g. Pit­lo­chry or Aber­lour. Half of these con­tracts were awar­ded as a res­ult of tender pro­cesses car­ried out via Quick Quotes or out­side PCS, invit­ing mostly loc­al sup­pli­ers to take part in the tender pro­cess because of their expert­ise and pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence in work­ing in the park and liais­ing with loc­al stake­hold­ers. This same rationale also applies for the oth­er half of the 17 loc­al sup­pli­ers who won a con­tract after scor­ing highest based on the com­mer­cial and qual­ity award cri­ter­ia owing to their know­ledge of the loc­al area and exper­i­ence deliv­er­ing pro­jects of sim­il­ar scope.

3. Graph­ic­al rep­res­ent­a­tion of this data is shown in Table 1 below. It demon­strates that while only 3% by value of the con­tracts awar­ded in the year to 31 Octo­ber 2025 were awar­ded to firms with­in the park bound­ar­ies, these con­tracts accoun­ted for 21% of the total num­ber of awards made. Indeed, 40% by num­ber of con­tracts awar­ded were to firms either in or very close to the park bound­ar­ies, with these loc­al firms win­ning lower value contracts.

Con­clu­sion

1. The data col­lec­ted provides a bench­mark on which to devel­op our pro­cure­ment approach to the bene­fit of the loc­al com­munity. The Park Author­ity will con­tin­ue in its efforts to inform and assist loc­al firms, to facil­it­ate their suc­cess through fair and leg­ally sound pro­cure­ment practices.

Mikko Saari, 31 Octo­ber 2025 mikkosaari@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Table 1 Data

Loc­a­tion	Total value of con­tracts awar­ded	Num­ber of con­tracts awar­ded	Aver­age value of contracts
In the park	108,241 3%	9	12,027
Around the park	843,948 25%	8	105,494
Out­side the park	2,366,647 71%	26	91,025
Grand Total	3,318,836 100%	43	77,182