Suppliers guide
Suppling The National Lottery Community Fund (The Fund)
The Fund supports people and communities to prosper and thrive. We are the largest community funder in the UK and distribute funds raised through The National Lottery to communities across the UK. We are one of 12 distributors of National Lottery funding, and we are part of a wider National Lottery family.
Our funding has a positive impact and makes a difference to people’s lives. We support projects focused on things that matter, including:
- economic prosperity
- employment
- young people
- mental health
- loneliness
- helping the UK reach net zero by 2050
Our principles
The Fund follows a set of key principles that underpin procurement. These are aligned to the procurement rules and regulations, policies, and the Fund’s commitment to supporting communities to thrive and prosper.
Obtain value for money
We introduce competition by default and assess bids on whole-lifecycle cost and quality awarding to the most advantageous tenderer.
Demonstrate good practice
The Fund’s procurement practices are aligned to Government Commercial Standards to meet expectations on planning, management, and execution of procurement activities.
Compliance with the public sector legislative requirement
The Fund’s procurement processes comply with legal and government policy requirements:
- open, fair, and transparent activity
- the form of competition is proportionate to the value and requirements to encourage new start-ups and small or medium enterprises (SME’s) by applying lean principles to procurement activity avoiding overly complex processes and minimising supplier costs
- comply with the data protection requirements
- implement social value as core evaluation criteria
The procurement team
Procurement plays a key role in the delivery of the Fund’s business objectives. Procurement sets procurement policy, in line with best practice for the organisation. We are responsible for delivering best value procurement solutions for all goods and services required by the business.
The Procurement team manages the procurement process for all business requirements with a contract value meeting a certain threshold. Our services range from supporting specification development to award of contract and providing post contract support. We also manage the procurement process for any requirements that are of a complex or high-risk nature.
Our procurement vision
Our vision for procurement is to engage, support and enable the Fund to deliver its purpose to support people and communities to thrive. We believe this can be achieved by fostering an inclusive, collaborative, innovative and strategic approach to procurement. Our approach is solution-focused and commercially effective to support delivery of the Fund’s goals and evidenced social value.
Our procurement mission statement
We will be an enabler across all procurement activity delivering an excellent service, adding value across delivery, and providing efficient operations. We promote social value, tackle the climate emergency, and optimise value. We align to the Fund’s principles and goals by being purposeful, impact orientated, relevant and value adding.
Service outline
The Fund is classified as a sub-central contracting authority. We are committed to ensuring that our procurement processes and policy support public money spent in a way that is fair, equal and transparent.
| Estimated level of expenditure | Procurement process |
|---|---|
| Up to £12,000 including VAT | 1 written fixed price quotation |
| £12,001 - £30,000 including VAT | 3 written fixed price quotations |