Improvement East - the east of England Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership-is a partnership of councils and other local service providers working together to deliver excellent Local Area Agreement outcomes, achieve efficiency savings and support economic growth and community empowerment. The RIEP is concious of quickly responding to the topical needs of their region - for example the current economic downturn.  In the current economic environment there is a risk that authorities will fail to meet their mandatory service obligation, due to the interruption of supply chain caused by business failure. Improvement East were keen therefore to indentify categories of expenditure on goods and services that were particularly exposed should current suppliers to the region become less able or unable to deliver.

Spikes Cavell were commisioned to undertake regional supplier analysis of all upper-tier authorities in the east.  As Spikes Cavell had already analysed expenditure across the region they were able to say “how much was spent on what and by whom”, including the categorisation of suppliers and identification of common suppliers. The new Risk Audit service was developed specifically to produce the required information.

The results of Spikes Cavell's analysis identified major areas of risk in the area of social care, where fall-back procedures were needed to be put in place, in order to ensure continuous provision of service.