Hampshire county council picked up the Innovation and progress, finance and procurement award in this years Guardian Public Services Awards.   As reported in last the award supplement last wednesday, the council are gearing up the framework approach to cover £3bn of construction across all public services in Hampshire, with predicted savings of over £40m.

The framework pre-approves contractors regionally, claims to halve lead in times and reduce advertising and procurement costs and deals with the sustainability approach of encouraging the use of more local contractors.

Winner: Hampshire County Council on behalf of the South East Centre of Excellence (SECE)
On behalf of SECE, Hampshire County Council has pioneered a new approach to procuring and managing this work. The SECE Major Framework is about streamlining procurement processes and delivering improved performance and efficiencies. It is also about ambition, innovation, and collaboration.