For Suppliers

Below you will find information on how to become a supplier to NHS LPP and separately how to become a supplier more generally to the NHS.

1)      How to become a supplier to NHS LPP

At NHS LPP, we pride ourselves on working with the very best suppliers for the benefit of the NHS and its patients. We highly value the suppliers we work with because we know they share our high standards and we support their innovation, their knowledge and contribution to the NHS as a whole.

From April 2022, all NHS procurement has to include a minimum 10% Net Zero and social value weighting as outlined in PPN06/20. Please log onto the NHS LPP Social Value pages to learn more about the pan-London approach to social value which includes some additional resources for suppliers.

As outlined in the NHS Net Zero Supplier Roadmap, from April 2023, the NHS has adopted the Government’s ‘Taking Account of Carbon Reduction Plans’ (PPN 06/21), requiring all suppliers with new contracts for goods, services, and/or works with an anticipated contract value above £5 million per annum, to publish a carbon reduction plan for their scope 1 and 2 and a subset of their scope 3 emissions as a minimum.  From April 2024, this will be extended to cover all new procurements.

NHS England published Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP) guidance in February 2023 and is providing weekly supplier CRP training sessions (see options below) as well as offering a CRP checking service to give suppliers feedback on their plans, which you can access by emailing your draft CRP to england.crp-check@nhs.net.

Supplier CRP support webinar​s:
​For more information, click on the links below.

CCS CRP Supplier Training Webinar​

NHS CRP Supplier Webinar​

Benefits of being a supplier

As a supplier working with NHS LPP, you will receive excellent business opportunities support from our team of experts including a dedicated supplier relationship management function, and other benefits specific to your product or service.

In simple terms, our agreements provide the NHS and other public sector organisations with a list of pre-qualified suppliers that can bid for work around a specific group of services - buyers then award individual contracts throughout the lifetime of the framework. This means suppliers on our frameworks or Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPSs) benefit from reduced market competition, as only those who have been awarded a place on the agreement are invited to tender for new business opportunities.

Our agreements are trusted and used by a large number of NHS organisations. For example, our clinical staffing framework is used by 90% of trusts in London. The agreements are also accessible by all public sector bodies in the UK, in addition to NHS trusts, and are used by other organisations such as universities, local authorities and central government.

To find out more details about the benefits, please view our Benefits of being a supplier flyer.  

Guidance on promotion 

Once you have been awarded a place on one of our frameworks or DPSs, you may wish to promote this in external communications to your organisation's audiences. To help you manage this effectively and accurately, we've pulled together a guide: NHS LPP Supplier guidance on promotion. If you have any questions on this, please contact the relevant Category Manager or our Communications team at Customer@lpp.nhs.uk and we'll be happy to help.   

Activity Based Income (ABI)

We keep any Activity Based Income (ABI) charges at, or below the market rate and as an NHS organisation, all ABI generated from our work with suppliers is reinvested back into the NHS - either to NHS LPP to help with our work to support trusts, or to the trusts themselves.

For an overview of what's involved with ABI at NHS LPP, please see our Supplier ABI guide.

Interested to find out more?

If you have questions, please get in touch with the relevant category team at NHS LPP (you can find relevant contact details on the category web pages) or contact Customer@lpp.nhs.uk.

More information 

You can learn more about DPSs here: Supplier DPS introductory guide. 

 

2)      How to become a supplier to the NHS

In addition to the agreements managed by NHS LPP, the NHS procures additional services directly.  Where it does this, NHS Contracting Authorities are required to advertise procurements on the UK e-notification service ‘Find a Tender Service’ (FTS) which replaced the EU OJEU / TED system for procurements commencing after January 2021.

Just as with NHS LPP, the NHS contracting authorities must ensure that your company is capable of serving the NHS. So to be considered as a supplier you must follow the instructions given on the contract notice and complete all stages of the procurement process.

NHS Contracting Authorities use a mixture of Framework agreements and direct contracts as defined below:

  • Framework agreements – A framework agreement lists organisations that have been successfully assessed to deliver products and services. This assessment is based on both Quality, Social Value and Commercial criteria. Framework agreements can offer the NHS an opportunity to either call-off services directly (without a further competition), or hold a further competition with the approved list of suppliers. This compliant route to market offers both suppliers and the NHS reduced procurement time and cost.
  • A Dynamic Purchasing system – a DPS is another form of framework agreement but has more flexibility built in. The main differences between the two types of agreement include:
    • suppliers can join a DPS at any time
    • there is no direct award option available in a DPS
    • pricing is determined at the contract award stage in a DPS
    • an unlimited number of suppliers can join a DPS.
  • Contract – where there is no framework agreement available or the service required is unique, the NHS will go out to market for a contract or contracts with a supplier for a specific requirement.

There are a number of ways to find opportunities to tender for NHS business:

More information
Dynamic Purchasing Systems in detail
Click here >
About framework and DPS agreements
Click here >