2.2 In 2015-16, CCS employed 790 full-time equivalent employees and reported operating costs of £66.3 million. CCS offers buying services to central government departments and wider public sector bodies such as local authorities, the NHS and housing associations. These services include:
• buying activities on behalf of seven departments - running the procurement process for common goods and services, from the invitation to tender to the award of a contract;
• managing contracts - administration of certain contracts after award on behalf of seven departments;
• managing customer relationships - CCS manages the relationship with customers and responds to enquiries from central government and the wider public sector;
• creating and implementing government commercial policy - CCS develops and implements government commercial policy and provides guidance on commercial policies as necessary; and
• producing and managing buying frameworks - CCS produces and manages buying frameworks for common goods and services. In 2015-16, CCS had about 110 frameworks allowing public sector organisations to buy goods and services such as office supplies, training, legal services and vehicles;
And the following services, which report to the Government Chief Commercial Officer:
• managing relationships with strategically important suppliers - CCS manages relationships with the suppliers that have large or multiple contracts with government;
• advising on complex procurement - CCS advises and supports departments on complex procurements; and
• improving government commercial capability - CCS carries out a programme to improve the commercial capability of staff across government.
2.3 Central government departments have access to the services that CCS offers, whereas the wider public sector mainly uses CCS for its frameworks and policy support (Figure 10). In this report, we have reviewed the main services that report to the CCS chief executive and have not focused on roles that report to the government's chief commercial officer. We discuss CCS governance arrangements in Parts One and Three.