Kent Catholic Schools’ Partnership

A regular client of Schools’ Buying Club – this time, needing support to procure their cleaning, audit, and statutory testing services

Schools’ Buying Club holds a successful relationship with the Trust having previously procured their catering service, which delivered a guaranteed return of £200k over the 3-year contract for its primary schools and £180k over the 3-year contract for its secondary schools. Most recently we helped to procure their cleaning, audit and statutory testing services.

The academies previously had a range of cleaning providers and in-house teams; the new single supplier contract has been able to deliver a more consistent standard across the Trust which can be managed more efficiently at Trust level. It also gave the Trust the opportunity to introduce the Living Wage Foundation’s ‘Real Living Wage’ across all the academies.

The audit tender process unearthed massive efficiencies for the Trust thanks to its mature status and already embedded financial measures. This led to a vast saving of around £75,000 across 3-years. We initially received six interested suppliers in the statutory testing tender with the successful bidder achieving the Trust a saving of around £400,000 whilst also improving the service delivery through combining testing functions.

“When the Kent Catholic Schools’ Partnership faced the daunting task of re-tendering operations across its academies, it could have found no better partner than the Schools’ Buying Club. Steering us through a complex tendering process and helping us to deliver substantial financial savings and an improved service for our Children and Young People. To anyone in a similar position, I would highly recommend the Schools’ Buying Club.”  Mark Harris, Finance Director.