Procurement Strategy for Schools & MATs

We build procurement strategies on your behalf. Improve the way you buy and manage services; secure long-term value from your suppliers. 

Procurement strategies tailored to your unique needs

We create unique, long-term approaches to how you buy and manage the services you use every day.

Upon delivery of your model, we’ll help to roll it out for you, training your team so that, in all future procurement endeavours, they can follow a specialist process that ensures you get the best services at the fairest prices. 

Talk to us about your procurement strategy

How we build your procurement strategy

Review & diagnostic

We start by assessing your current procurement policies, contracts and overall spend. Your policies will be benchmarked against the Procurement Act 2023 and Academy Trust Handbook requirements. 

Strategy & operating model

Using what we learn from the review, we build a procurement strategy, governance framework and approval processes, all mapped to how your school/trust operates in the real world. 

Implementation

Policies, templates and a contract register go live. Performance measures are introduced to ensure you have full visibility over your ongoing and future procurement.

Capability building & handover

Procure - catering tendering

We train your team, so that procurement responsibilities are clearly defined and understood, and the process becomes properly embedded.

Benefits

Why work with us?

Most procurement specialists want you to become reliant on them. But many schools and MATs want to retain control over their procurement process. This is exactly what we help you do.

Access broad procurement expertise without hiring additional resources

Give time back to your team by making the procurement process more efficient

We’re completely independent, meaning our processes are product-agnostic

We cover your entire procurement portfolio, so the strategy works for every purchase

Your strategy can be run independently; you won’t be dependent on us

FAQs

Can’t find the answer you’re looking for? Get in touch and our team will be happy to help.

Contact us

Four stages: review, design, implementation, handover.

The review covers your contracts, spend and policies, checked against the Procurement Act 2023 and the Academy Trust Handbook. 

Design is where we set the approval thresholds, sign-off routes and contract management framework around your trust. 

Implementation puts it live and trains your team on it. 

Handover agrees who owns procurement from here.

Yes, and it usually works better that way.

We bring the procurement specialism: market rates, how suppliers build their pricing, which specifications cause arguments in year two. Your team brings everything about your school or trust that we don’t know. Most teams we work with have capable people who are short on time, which is a very different problem from not knowing what they’re doing.

The record gets built as we go, rather than reconstructed at the end. What was considered, what it was judged against, who decided and why. This creates an auditable e-trail that can be referred back to if challenged.

The Academy Trust Handbook 2026 requires trusts to consider DfE buying opportunities and record their decision-making. The 2025 version only said trusts should consider them, with nothing about keeping a record.

You don’t have to use a DfE deal. You do have to show you looked and explain why you went another way.

You run it. You’ll have the policies, templates, register, reporting and a named owner, and we’ll have run at least one live procurement process alongside your team so the system has been tested and everyone understands how it works.

After that, we’re there when you want us. Many schools and trusts bring us back for catering and the bigger tenders. 

It all starts with a chat

We’re here when you’re ready. The first step is a no-obligation chat with our procurement specialists. We’re here to act as advisors. If you’ve got any questions, please do let us know.