Recommendation 172

We also heard that “the feedback from the voluntary sector involved in those contracts is that the contracts have felt quite constraining and they have gone to the big national organisations” whereas “smaller providers have felt squeezed out” and that “they were not able to compete”. 318 Niki Scordi told us that the commissioning processes excluded smaller organisations unless they were able to partner with a larger one. She said that her charity—a larger one in terms of women’s services—”struggled” with the commissioning process and yet “had to step in and partner with local organisations” to help them bid. 319 Rebecca Robson explained that, as someone running “a small charity without separate IT teams, HR teams and contract management teams”, applying to be awarded a contract “was a very lengthy and complicated process”. She mentioned “a lot of legal language and very technical language”, though acknowledged that she received support from “Ministry of Justice staff and Probation staff, who have been lovely, understanding and patient”. 320 She added that she also received support from a larger organisation and “if it was not for them we probably would not have secured the contract”, mentioning various “policies” that bidders were expected to have in place, as well as “IT security” standards. 321 Damian Hinds MP conceded that “procurement rules, legal risk, and due diligence” can sometimes “restrict the number of bidders”. 322 The operation of current contracts