Carbon Reduction Plans for NHS Contracts: Are You Ready?

From April 2023, the NHS will require its suppliers of new contracts over £5 million to publish a carbon reduction plan (CRP). If you are planning to bid for any NHS contracts, you need to be prepared.

Why do suppliers have to publish a carbon reduction plan?

The government published a Procurement Policy Note, PPN 06/21, which details how government contracts must factor carbon reduction plans into their procurement processes in order to achieve its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The PPN states that CRPs must be provided by suppliers and assessed as a selection criterion as part of the bidding process. To comply with this, the NHS has introduced a requirement for CRPs for all contracts over £5 million per year as part of their procurement processes from April 2023. This will be extended to cover procurement exercises of any size in April 2024. CRPs are required in addition to the existing 10% weighting on net zero and social value which was implemented in all NHS procurement in April 2022, as part of its net zero supplier roadmap.

What should be included in the plan?

The CRP must show how you are planning to reduce your emissions from the sources included in scope 1 and scope 2 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and a defined subset of scope 3 emissions including: upstream transportation and distribution; waste generated in operations; business travel; employee commuting; and downstream transportation and distribution.

The plan must include:

Confirmation that you are committed to achieving net zero by 2050 or earlier
Your current emissions for scope 1, scope 2, and the defined subset of scope 3 emissions
Emissions reporting in carbon dioxide equivalent for the seven greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol
Details of environmental measures you are taking, including certification schemes or specific carbon reduction measures you have implemented
Confirmation that your board (or company director if no board) have approved it

You must clearly publish the plan on your company website and update it annually at a minimum.

What does the plan need to look like?

You can find the suggested template for a CRP here. The plan does not have to be in this exact format, as long as all of the required information is included.

How will the plan be assessed?

When reviewing submitted documents at the selection stage of the process, the CRP will be judged on a pass/fail basis. If it does not meet the minimum requirements, you will not be able to go any further in the procurement process. Your plan will not be compared against other bidders’ plans, it will only be checked to confirm that it meets the requirements.

What happens if we don’t have the information?

This information will soon be required for most of the bids you will be submitting, so you need to start working on measuring your emissions. There are a few exceptions where if you can prove that you have exceptional circumstances you can be excluded from the requirement, but in most cases, you will need to provide a plan. The information included in the plan will become a requirement for all public sector contracts, and increasingly for private sector contracts too as companies work increasingly hard to meet net zero targets The move to CRPs is unavoidable, so take advantage of support and information that can help you, including:

The technical standard for completion of CRPs
Regular updates from the Crown Commercial Service
NHS CRP supplier webinars
External agencies offer support and tools for calculating carbon emissions, and some are free for SMEs and VCSEs

Does this all sound like a lot to consider on top of your already busy work schedule? Consider working with professional bid writers to write your response. At AM Bid, we can take the bid writing and management off your hands while you focus on this. Our clients enjoy an 80%+ bid success rate on contracts worth £50,000 to £500 million.