Public sector recruiters will need to secure a place on Crown Commercial Service (CCS) central agreements or see a drop in the number of candidates they can place with Whitehall departments, a procurement lawyer has warned.

The warning follows a report published late last week by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a select committee of the House of Commons.

The report reveals that central government departments use central procurement agreements, negotiated by the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), for only half of consultancy and temporary staff assignments. According to the report, this practice reduces government’s ability to get the best deals. 

Consequently the committee recommends that from April 2016, all central government departments use Crown Commercial Service agreements as their default option for appointing consultants and temporary staff. The exceptions allowed are “rare” instances where, for example, particularly specialist skills are required and for which the business case provides a “clear justification” for use of other procurement routes.

CCS is an executive agency, sponsored by the Cabinet Office, bringing together policy, advice and direct buying, providing commercial services to the public sector, with the aim of saving money for taxpayers.

Michael Mousdale, procurement lawyer at law firm DWF, told Recruiter if government acts on the committee’s recommendation, departments would be compelled to just use agencies on central government framework agreements. For agencies, that would increase the importance of securing a place on these frameworks.

“Whatever the business you’re in, if you don’t get yourself on a framework, that freezes you out for usually around four years… the normal length of a framework, so it is important for any business to get on a framework,” he said.

Although Mousdale was keen to point out that some off-framework agreements are still subject to procurement rules.

“That doesn’t mean to say you can’t come off framework if you are a government department or agency, but if you do, you still have to comply with procurement rules. You can’t say ‘I’ll go off framework and not worry about procurement rules’. Whichever way you do it, you still have obligations to follow.”

When asked if the Cabinet Office had any plans to follow through on the PAC’s recommendation, a spokesperson for the department told Recruiter it will not comment on specific recommendations at this time. “We are carefully considering the recommendations of the report and will respond in due course,” the spokesperson added.