No at-scale commercial and procurement capability service for local government

The Procurement Act 2023, in force since February 2025, rewrote the rules governing roughly a third of council spend. The main training offer is the Government Commercial College's generic e-learning built for Whitehall, and the Government Commercial Function does not serve councils. Local Partnerships, the HM Treasury, LGA and Welsh Government joint venture, provides exactly the right kind of deployable commercial support and is small and fee-funded, while the purchasing consortia cover commodity buying rather than complex contract management. NAO and PAC work repeatedly links council failures, Thurrock's investments and Woking's development deals among them, to absent commercial skills, and reorganisation now adds mass contract novation and re-procurement risk.

Councils transact tens of billions of pounds a year through contracts and commercial ventures. Capability gaps convert directly into failed regeneration deals, outsourcing disputes, unrealised Procurement Act benefits, and reorganisation transitions that destroy value instead of releasing it.

A grant-funded expansion of Local Partnerships into a local government commercial service: regional commercial hubs, a contract-management academy, and deployable deal teams councils can call on for high-value transactions and reorganisation novations. MHCLG would sponsor it with the Cabinet Office, and the LGA would co-own it.

// Build together: Counterparty: Local Partnerships and LGA to pilot deployable commercial teams and a contract-management academy; MHCLG grant scales it.

Tens of billions flow through council contracts where skills gaps caused real collapses, Local Partnerships could be scaled, and no dated trigger forces action this year.