If a tender has been published in the Official Journal of the Europen Union (OJEU) [please see the section on EU Thresholds], then details of the contract award must also be published within 45days of the award. Much information can be gleaned from studying the awards. Here we publish a selection only of Health and Social Care contracts awarded over the past four weeks.

In Dcembe 2012 the results of a growing trend for the formation of large frameworks started to cone through. The examples below include :

• frameworks which include both very large and very small providers;
• varying success rates, in one competition 76 providers were accepted from the 82 tenders received; in another 31 providers were accepted for various combinations of lots, some of which had seen as many as 93 tenders submitted.

There have been other examples where the purchaser was so overwhelmed by the number of tenders received that they decided, after the process for submission of tenders was completed, to limit the number of providers into the framework. This breaches procurement law as in order to comply with the general requirements for transparency and equal treatment, the purchaser must tell those considering submitting a tender what is required in order to be accepted into the framework. They cannot decide after the event, for example: to take the top 12 best scores; or to set an abitrary threshold and accept into the framework those who exceed that score only. These pracices should always be challenged.

In March 2013 it is interesting to note the increase in contracts awarded for health services and the LES the funding for which is being handed over to Local Authorities from 1st April 2013. Careful review of the contract award notices indicates that some groups of GPs are already organising themselves in order to tender for contracts.