Despite continuing government efforts to rein in spending, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that underlying debt will be 91.6% of GDP in 2023-24, rising to 93.2% in 2026-27, higher than at any time since the 1960s.
As a result, pressure from the centre to manage costs remains enormous and, given the government’s determination to demonstrate an on-going commitment to financial prudence, all parts of the public sector are continually obliged to demonstrate that they are buying competitively.
Although many departments made considerable progress during the years of austerity following 2010, identifying cost reductions on an on-going basis inevitably becomes more difficult once the ‘easy wins’ have been captured. And many public sector bodies lack the resources and experience in-house to capture all of the cost reduction available to them despite attempts from the centre to standardise buying.
Our experience
Nelson La Rochelle has considerable experience of cost reduction in the public sector.
We regularly work with NHS, local government and educational clients helping them to identify such reductions, and understand the regulations governing their procurement.
Clients have included the country’s largest NHS foundation trust, for which we negotiated a price reduction of almost £750,000 over three years, several district councils and many universities including Loughborough, Bath, Liverpool and Derby.
We reduced the University of Derby’s costs by up to 59% in several categories of expenditure. We did so on a genuine and sustainable basis with minimal disruption to its day-to-day operations and are confident of our ability to reduce the costs of other public sector bodies.