2.24 The Cabinet Office told us that it uses a 'mystery shopper' scheme to monitor its progress in removing barriers affecting SMEs. It launched this scheme in February 2011. Any government provider, including SMEs, can raise concerns about public procurement practice directly with the CCS. This enables the CCS to investigate and take action to address concerns.
2.25 However, our previous report found limited but indicative evidence that subcontractors were not aware of the service, and those who had heard of it feared that making a report would result in a loss of business.15 A 2014 survey of 216 specialist subcontractors in the construction industry found that 72% had not heard of the service and a further 15% had heard of it but did not know what it does. These concerns were echoed by sector representatives we spoke to during fieldwork for this report.
2.26 Since it launched in 2011, the CCS told us its Mystery Shopper team has received over 1000 complaints. The CCS does not publish details of on-going investigations, but once it has concluded its work it publishes short case summaries on its website, with details of any actions taken. Between February 2011 and January 2016, it has published details of around 600 cases. Overall, the total number of complaints published each year has increased since 2011 but remains low relative to the number of government contracts (86 complaints in 2015).16
2.27 However, not all of these complaints relate to SMEs and the CCS has only partial data on the size of the organisation affected. To identify the complaints most likely to come from SMEs, we compared the case summaries for January to September 2015 to a list of issues commonly identified as barriers by SMEs (see paragraphs 2.28 to 2.30). This identified 38 complaints about these barriers. The two most commonly raised issues were insufficient capacity (9 complaints) and late or no payment (7 complaints). We also looked at complaints raised over a similar period in 2011 (Figure 5 overleaf). The number and type of concerns had increased between the two years but numbers are too low to draw meaningful comparisons. It is therefore not possible for us or the CCS to use these numbers to conclude on progress with addressing barriers facing SMEs.
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15 Comptroller and Auditor General, Paying government suppliers on time, Session 2014-15, HC 906, National Audit Office, January 2015.
16 Case summaries are available at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/mystery-shopper-results