Building Procurement in Social Housing in Britain: A Review of the Main Issues

Abstract

Procurement, meaning the process through which a purchaser obtains a product or a service, is at the heart of the development process in social housing and is, for this reason, crucial to the implementation of publicly-funded housing programmes. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of different procurement methods, particularly their implications for value-for-money including quality and for the promotion of innovation. Procurement methods may be classified along two principal independent dimensions: first, according to the extent to which the contractor assumes responsibility for design work and second, according to whether the price of the contract is determined by means of negotiation or a competitive tender or a mixture of the two.