The Cirrus Consortium (The Consortium) is a procurement consortium primarily for the social housing sector. The Consortium is managed on behalf of the Membership by Cirrus Purchasing Ltd, a specialist purchasing and supply consultancy supporting the social housing, public and private sectors.

The Consortium currently consists of approximately 35 Member Registered Providers of Social Housing across England and Wales with a lead contracting authority of Spectrum Property Care, with additional organisations joining the consortium on a regular basis. As contracting authorities access the frameworks available from the Consortium, they are allowed Membership to the Consortium, giving them active input into the Central Purchasing Body.

The Cirrus Consortium established a new framework of multiple suppliers for the supply of building materials, tools and associated services to expand upon the highly successful materials framework.

Bidders were sought for the following lots:

Lot 1: General building materials including paint and tools;

Lot 2: Plumbing & heating materials, including gas spares and renewables;

Lot 3: Electrical materials;

Lot 4: Kitchen materials.

This tender was undertaken as an open procedure, as detailed in Regulation 15 of the UK statutory instrument Public Contracts Regulations 2006/5.

The framework is available for use by all contracting authorities (as defined by Regulation 3 of the UK statutory instrument Public Contracts Regulations 2006/5), but particularly Registered Providers of Social Housing within England and Wales (as defined by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008), Registered Social Landlords within Scotland (as defined by the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010) and local authorities across the UK.

This framework is to cover call-off contracts made within England, Scotland and Wales, but excludes Northern Ireland. The framework agreement is to be four years in duration from the commencement date.

The total estimated range of this framework agreement is up to £250million over the duration of the framework. However, this is an estimate only and the potential maximum value could significantly exceed this value.

Award of a place on this framework to any supplier does not guarantee any contracts will be awarded to that supplier.

Call-off contracts.

Call-off contracts will be awarded by contracting authorities in accordance with the rules as defined by Regulation 19 of the Public Contracts Regulations UKSI 2006/5.

For the avoidance of doubt, the trading and invoicing relationship will be directly between the relevant framework supplier(s) and the relevant contracting authority/authorities.

Mini-competitions will typically be evaluated on a cost/quality basis, the relative weightings of these elements, together with any specific sub-criteria used by the Member organisations, will be set by each Member organisation to meet the specific needs of their business for each mini-competition.

An electronic auction was not used as part of the selection process for the framework agreement. However Consortium Members reserve the right to conduct mini-competitions through e-auctions.