WOLSELEY, Jewson, Grafton Group, and Edmundson are among 17 suppliers that have secured spots on a large-scale materials framework that has been designed specifically for social landlords in Scotland.
The framework has been developed by PfH Scotland – a procurement consortium of nearly 50 housing organisations that collectively manage 60 per cent of Scotland’s social housing stock.
The deal consists of ten national lots, allowing any housing association, co-operative or local authority housing department in Scotland to choose from tens of thousands of aids and adaptations, building materials, plumbing and heating materials, gas spares, renewable products, tiles, electrical items, stair lifts, tool and plant hire and maintenance services from national and local merchants.
For a large proportion of Scottish housing providers, buying materials for new build or repairs and maintenance projects accounts for over half their total spend.
This new framework has been designed to ensure strong local and national coverage. Appointed merchants have branches right across the country, ensuring that housing providers from all over Scotland can access materials easily.
The new deal will also guarantee stock supply, meaning that Scottish landlords are not exposed to the regional shortages and price increases that many have recently experienced. Member housing organisations will be prioritised by merchants and stock sourced from across the UK to meet deadlines and demand.
A number of the merchants who supplied products on PfH Scotland’s former materials framework have bid for this tender at a highly competitive rate due to the value generated from the previous deal. This has led to significantly reduced prices across all ten lots.
As a result of better prices, wider choice and new cost control measures, PfH Scotland estimates that the volume of spend going through the new materials deal will increase significantly over the next four years with more landlords starting to use the deal and existing framework customers increasing their spend.
Prices on the new framework are set either quarterly or annually and if suppliers increase prices then PfH Scotland will assist landlords to obtain justification and manage the impact. This process also helps suppliers as the evidence they present to justify price rises often helps landlords to see that there are genuine reasons behind cost increases.
Steve Malone, managing director of PfH Scotland said, “Materials represents a huge spend area for social landlords and we’ve worked closely with merchants and manufacturers to create a framework that will offer strong geographic coverage to landlords and the opportunity to help them increase value for money so they can improve the service they provide to tenants. However, we also wanted the deal to work well for suppliers. There are examples of merchants on our previous deals seeing spend grow from nothing to £10m in just five years. This new deal brings added flexibility and security for both suppliers and social landlords.”
