Our Procurement Director looks ahead to 2026
Welcome to the first edition of the NOE CPC customer newsletter in 2026!
This month, we’re turning our attention to what lies ahead for our category teams and the wider organisation, spotlighting key priorities, emerging opportunities, and the developments shaping the year to come. To introduce this month's newsletter, our Procurement Director, Stephen Sercombe, reflects on his team's work and looks at what lies ahead for 2026.
As we all know the NHS faces significant challenges and is undergoing considerable change. This includes facing widespread cost pressures, while at the same time striving to improve service delivery and transform how services are delivered, not least through investment in new technologies and adopting different ways of working. For those of us involved in supporting NHS procurement it is a demanding set of priorities and means more than ever our commercial skillsets are in demand to help deliver on that agenda and make a positive contribution to achieve the NHS’s goals. That is true here at NOE CPC where throughout 2025 we saw unprecedented demand from our NHS stakeholders to support their procurement activity across all of our category areas, which include Technology (ICT); FM, Property and Business Services; HR & People and Healthcare Services & Pharmacy. I’m pleased to say as a team we were able to rise to that challenge working more collaboratively than ever with individual trusts and ICSs, to help run efficient and aggregated procurement processes taking considerable weight off local trust procurement teams. We have also been able to deliver financial savings of £12.42m which can be reinvested back into the NHS.
The introduction of the new Procurement Act, together with the Provider Selection Regime, has changed the regulatory regime for those involved in public procurement. Here at NOE CPC that has meant reviewing and updating our processes and procedures, together with training our teams to be able to work effectively and compliantly in line with those new rules. Trust based procurement teams have also needed to adapt in the same way, and we have been pleased to able to support over that period of transition, including by providing advice and guidance, and continued access to valued framework agreements and procurement support in key spend areas. You can join us on 25th February for a panel discussion hosted by Esther Venning from Hill Dickinson to explore the impact of the Procurement Act over the past year and discuss what lies ahead for NHS procurement.
We have been working hard to engage with NHS customers and suppliers early during our framework procurement processes. We were pleased to have facilitated our Meet the Buyer – Supplier event last month on behalf of the West Yorkshire ICS Procurement Teams, providing local suppliers a chance to engage directly with buyers. We worked with the Heads of Procurement in West Yorkshire right from building the concept of the event through to its delivery, and we had positive engagement with around 100 suppliers on the day. We will be looking to see if we can expand or replicate that event in other parts of the country.
It’s increasingly important that we do not work in isolation and that we procure as part of a wider ecosystem, working collaboratively with other framework providers. No one party can do everything in isolation and at the heart of that collaborative working are relationships forged between colleagues from category teams within different procurement organisations. This is something we have worked hard on, particularly in our alliance with NHS London Procurement Partnership (NHS LPP). Working with our partners has enabled us to bring you and expanded portfolio of frameworks, most recently the Apprenticeships and CPD Training frameworks (further details below). Alongside NHS LPP, we have done a lot of work around market and supplier management, including engagement with some key suppliers who are common to both organisations. This has helped us to better understand the commercial challenges facing those key suppliers, and for us to take a co-ordinated approach to how we develop our categories. Moving forward, we are keen to develop a network of professionals working in supplier engagement and relationships across our member trusts.
Over the next year and beyond we will continue to work closely with NHS England, the Central Commercial Function and the Cabinet Office to ensure we are aligned with national policy aims. Within NHS procurement we believe there will be continued focus on closer working between neighbouring trusts, between community and acute organisations, working as ICS’s, and in some cases we may well see the further development of shared services. For our part we will continue to adapt and work with our NHS stakeholders in a way that best works for them – identifying opportunities and working with them to standardise, aggregate, collaborate and work together across organisational boundaries in order to secure the best possible commercial outcomes for NHS.