10072026Dorset Net Zero Procurement toolkitClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKOur public sector organisations have made good progress in cutting their operational emissions. But the race to net zero needs stronger focus on the footprint of our supply chains - so embedding net zero in commissioning, procurement and contract management will be vital. Half of Dorset Council's budget is spent on goods, services and works and it makes up the majority of our footprint. Shifting whether, what and how much we buy has the greatest opportunity for impact to cut our emissions, leverage the transition in wider Dorset, and growing local & SME spend. However, there are many barriers to decarbonising our supply chains, including prioritising interventions, accessing quality supplier data, the availability of effective and transparent emissions calculators for all categories, difficulties influencing some markets, difficulties securing buy in and concerns about the costliness of sustainability. Critically, commissioners, procurement professionals and suppliers also often lack capacity and capability to ensure that consideration is given to net zero during the whole commissioning, procurement and contract management process. Importantly, these barriers are shared across the public sector, and inconsistency in how we address them would risk inefficiencies and complications for local suppliers. We therefore aim to work with public sector partners to develop an innovative place-based approach to net zero procurement. Rather than developing separate individual approaches that can complicate matters for suppliers and risk duplicating our efforts, we want to establish a toolkit that we can all use. Whilst this may not necessarily mean total alignment on all matters between partners, there is a clear opportunity to co-develop tools, training and guidance, and to make demands of suppliers as consistent as possible. We aim to assess our current shared position and identify opportunities to enhance our approach and make it more consistent. We want to help prioritise where we intervene, identify big contract opportunities, improve data collection and monitoring, strengthen our pre-procurement and market engagement processes, strengthen our specifications and evaluations, and better support contract managers. We will achieve this by co-developing better local training, guidance and tools for those involved in commissioning, designing, specifying, procuring, managing and tendering.