The UK’s underlying debt was 91.2% of the country’s GDP at the end of September 2024 and, following Rachel Reeves’s first budget, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that it will rise every year until the end of the decade, 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 education 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 leading its head of procurement to send us a testimonial once we had finished our work. “The assignment has undoubtedly saved us money at a time of real financial pressure”, he wrote, adding “I highly recommend Nelson La Rochelle to other organisations looking to reduce their costs”.
We are therefore very confident of our ability to reduce the costs of other public sector bodies.