Public Procurement Survey of Suppliers 2024

1 Sep 2025 11:14 AM

This is the report for the Survey of Suppliers to the Scottish Public Sector, held between the 10 September and 19 November 2024. The survey aimed to help us better understand the Scottish public procurement process from the perspective of suppliers.

Introduction

Background

This report provides a summary of findings from the Scottish Government's second survey of suppliers to the Scottish public sector, which was carried out in Autumn 2024.

The Scottish Government’s survey of suppliers was first conducted in 2020, and is designed to gather supplier perspectives on a range of topics of key importance to public sector procurement in Scotland. The themes explored in this 2024 edition of the survey include:

• organisations' experiences of bidding for and/or delivering Scottish public sector contracts;
• the provision of training, support and advice on tendering for contracts;
• barriers to bidding for and/or delivering contracts; and
• organisations’ experience of receiving feedback on their bids for Scottish public sector contracts.

In exploring suppliers' views on procurement within the Scottish public sector, we focused on procurement exercises undertaken by Scottish public sector bodies.[2]

The survey findings will help us better understand what is working effectively in current policies and practices and highlight areas of concern for the suppliers who have responded. Additionally, the findings will offer valuable evidence on how recent changes to public procurement policy have been received and what impact they have had in practice. This information will support ongoing efforts to make public procurement processes in Scotland more efficient, transparent, and responsive to the needs of suppliers.

Methodology

The supplier survey was conducted over an initial eight-week period from 10 September 2024 until 5 November 2024. This closing date was extended to 19 November 2024 to encourage greater participation. It was hosted using Microsoft Forms, an online survey platform and included a total of 53 questions. The majority of these were closed questions, asking participants to choose from a set list of responses. Additionally, the survey featured some open-ended questions, allowing respondents to provide more detailed feedback and express their opinions in their own words. The full list of survey questions can be viewed in Appendix 1.

In order to maximise the number of responses, we adopted a multi-faceted approach to promoting the survey. This involved:

• issuing survey invitations to suppliers registered on the Public Contracts Scotland website;
• publicising the survey on Scottish Procurement social media platforms, and through our stakeholder groups – in particular, the Procurement Policy Forum, the Public Procurement Group, the Procurement Supply Group and the Supplier Development Programme.

Participation in the survey was voluntary and all respondents were provided with a privacy notice before beginning the survey. At all stages of the research, all of the necessary steps were taken to ensure that the survey complied with General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) guidance and to ensure the anonymity of respondents. All quotes used in this report have been anonymised, with any potentially identifiable data being redacted.

The survey attracted a total of 344 responses. This response rate is lower than the response rate for the 2020 survey when 1,556 responses were received. Due to this difference in response rates, we have not drawn comparisons with this previous edition of the survey.

The analysis of survey results used both quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative analysis of the survey data, we undertook a descriptive analytical approach. The quantitative data provides a summary of the responses received. Some answers were aggregated where we received fewer than five responses. These have been noted in the report.

For the qualitative analysis, we undertook a thematic analysis using Microsoft Excel software. The responses were read, then coded into common themes, reflecting shared views and experiences of the participants. Based on these emerging themes, we developed a set of codes that captured the key concepts present in the data. These themes are presented in the report alongside representative quotes from respondents.

The following framework is used to describe the prevalence of themes to the open response questions:

• Many respondents, 20 or more respondents, a prevalent theme.
• Several respondents, between 10 and 19 respondents, a recurring theme.
• Some respondents, between 5 and 9 respondents, another theme.
• A few / a small number, fewer than 5 respondents, a less common theme.

Please also note the following limitations of the research:

• Respondents were self-selecting, and so the responses may not be representative of the population of suppliers to the Scottish public sector as a whole;
• Most questions were voluntary for respondents. We have noted how many respondents elected to answer each question;
• Percentages are rounded to whole numbers. Rounding errors mean these figures might not add up to 100.
• All responses have an equal weighting. We recognise this means a response from a small-sized enterprise has the same weight as the response from a large-sized enterprise; this approach ensures all views are presented.
• Any information cited in quotes may not be accurate and has not been validated or fact checked. Instead, the quotes represent, and should be treated as, the perspectives or experiences of respondents alone, rather than as factual information.

Structure of the report

The rest of this report is structured as follows:

• In section three, we provide an overview of the profile of survey respondents;
• In section four, we present a summary of the survey’s findings and highlight the key themes arising;
• In section five, we provide a conclusion, drawing together the key findings from the research.

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