Waste procurement guide
NHS PASA has produced guidance for Trusts and Consortiums on the procurement of waste management services to enable them to move towards Total Waste Management (TWM) services and align practice with the Department of Health HTM 07-01 Safe Management of Healthcare Waste (which replaces the 'Purple Book').
TWM describes the procurement of waste management as a whole and not as a series of unrelated separate contracts. This does not prescribe a single supplier providing all the services but it does encourage a prime contractor role, managing where necessary, sub contracted arrangements.
In order to bring all waste contracts under one umbrella, Trusts / Consortiums may wish to apply interim solutions to their existing contract. An example of an interim solution could be letting a shorter than usual length contract to have co-termination with, for example, healthcare /hazardous/general waste disposal contract in order to bring all waste streams under a single management contract at the next round of tendering. To support this practice, NHS PASA has produced guidance for NHS users on the procurement of interim solutions for:
Healthcare waste
Domestic and general waste
Total waste management
It is also important that Trusts consider contractual arrangements which go beyond individual needs, i.e. a Consortium approach. This approach, where trusts combine for procurement exercises, can deliver significant savings and efficiencies and supports the NHS ‘shared services’ philosophy. To help Trusts / Consortiums evaluate the tenders received, NHS PASA has produced the following tools for NHS users, based on the use of the above guidance:
