In November 2005 Communities and Local Government (at that time known as the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) published the National Procurement Strategy for the Fire & Rescue Service as part of the wider modernisation agenda and to enable the fire and rescue service to become better equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Fire and rescue service procurement took a significant step forward on 30 March 2006 with the creation of Firebuy Ltd - a new non-departmental public body which will buy equipment nationally for the service.

Firebuy Ltd will enable savings to be made by negotiating better deals for buying in bulk and will eliminate the duplication of procurement of fire-specific equipment by individual Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs).  Rather than all 47 FRAs negotiating separately for service-specific items such as vehicles, protective clothing and respiratory equipment, Firebuy Ltd will negotiate contracts on their behalf and take the lead in subsequent contract monitoring and service level monitoring.  It will be a Contracting Authority for the purposes of the EU procurement rules but ultimately it will remain the FRAs who acquire the assets and matching liabilities.

Firebuy will act as the specialist procurement agency focusing on fire service-specific equipment, in particular, appliances and clothing. It will be doing the technical investigations and standard-setting, develop output-based specifications and setting up call-off contracts for Fire and Rescue Services around the country. Firebuy Ltd will take the lead role in testing and acceptance activities for the lines of spend within its remit, thus avoiding the duplication of this work in each FRA.

Further information and documentation about this can be seen at the Communities and Local Government website: http://www.communities.gov.uk/fire/