The Government Procurement Service says it has saved more than £5 million per annum on travel booking fees as part of the new central government travel management services contract. The service announced the figure as it highlighted “significant improvements on the savings our frameworks deliver for customers” for 2011/12.

The central government travel contract was let in 2011. The domestic lot was awarded to Redfern Travel and the global lot was awarded to HRG.

The organisation said that other savings achieved in 2011/12 include:

• More than £1.8m saved on vehicles through eAuctions.
• More than £7m saved by transferring software licences rather than buying new.
• More than £22m of savings delivered through the Mobile Solutions framework.
• 46% savings on hardware costs and 49% savings on service costs for standard specification multi-functional devices through the new framework.
• Typical savings on office supplies include 59% on ballpoint pens, 67% on recycled paper and 87% on A4 notebooks.
• 50% reduction in cost to serve fees under the Natural Gas framework.

The service has also launched a new website to replace the previous Buying Solutions site.

The service says the new portal “has been developed to help simplify access to our frameworks and centralised deals, with information, guidance and direct access to the supporting eProcurement tools”.

It added: “This is an important milestone in the centralised procurement programme which is delivering significant and sustainable savings for the taxpayer. We will continue to add content and enhance the functionality over the coming weeks – please bear with us during the transition period.”

 Print This Post