Consortico

ConsortiCo Ltd is a company limited by guarantee (Registration No. 6919692) and social enterprise. It is wholly owned by its member organisations (Third sector organisations or TSOs) and its Directors are elected from nominees put forward by its full members. Any profits made by ConsortiCo Ltd are dispersed back to its member organisations or used to further develop the ConsortiCo limited ‘hub’ (for the benefit of its members and the communities it serves). The Consortico vision is to improve the quality of life of local people, especially those who are disadvantaged or vulnerable, by delivering high quality, cost-effective services. To help ConsortiCo and its member organisations achieve this, the consortium needs to continue to access funding through open and competitive tender or commissioning arrangements with public organisations.

It’s Chair, Brian Roe explained, "ConsortiCo Ltd will act as a ‘Super Contractor’ by first identifying public service contract　opportunities and then develop tender proposals in consortia with its member organisations. Once secured Consortico will be the lead contractor and deliver financial and contract compliance services on behalf of the whole consortia and liaise with the commissioners. Its member organisations will deliver the required public services under sub contract arrangements that ‘mirror’ the main contract".

"This way the ConsortiCo Ltd consortium will have the financial turnover and organisational capability to access the larger and more complex contracts that individual third sector organisations would not be able to deliver alone. In short we can continue, but now in partnership, to deliver our much needed services.

We have seen over the last few years many of the third sector’s traditional grants and service level agreements replaced with contracts. Our services are now often procured through open and competitive tendering. Nationally, government grants as a proportion of government funding to the third sector fell from 60% in the year ending March 31st 2004 to only 40% in March 31st 2008, whilst the reverse was the case for public service contract funding. 

Both the European Union and the UK Government have introduced procurement directives/regulations and legislation aimed at ensuring that potential providers of public service contracts have an equal opportunity to secure them, irrespective of where they may be based in the EU. This means we now face open competition to deliver ‘our’ services.

The UK government is also striving to gain increased economies whilst achieving better public services. To achieve this they have adopted a strategy of putting out to tender bigger and more complex services. They are replacing many smaller contracts with fewer bigger ones (the aggregation agenda). They gain their savings because they have less contracts to procure (less legal promotional and administrative cost) and less contracts to monitor. This results in a substantial saving to the public purse.

The consequence however, is that many of our existing TSOs are not big enough to deal with these bigger contract opportunities or are not equipped to take on the risks involved. This is where a formal consortium has its place. To bring together partnerships of well run TSOs, to jointly deliver the required services at reduced risk.

ConsortiCo Ltd operates across all markets that third sector organisations currently deliver to. This is because existing consortia, based on specific markets, are already reporting difficulties in flexibly responding to the more holistic and complex public service contracts offered by government sector commissioners.

ConsortiCo Ltd has purposely set out to be the most effective provider of ‘holistic services’. ConsortiCo Ltd will offer the public and commissioners alike, all the flexibilities and economies that such a consortium of not for profit organisations, working in partnership, can muster.

What is our market place?

Why does the third sector need ConsortiCo Ltd?