Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following the publication of the Crown Commercial Service annual report and accounts 2023–24, published on 24 July, what criteria are used to determine which public bodies receive payments under the new Customer Payment Initiative; what administrative costs have and will be incurred in operating this scheme for the past and next financial year; and what assessment they have made of reducing the CCS levy rate instead of issuing payments under the Customer Payment Initiative.

Customers who have used CCS agreements in FY2022/23 were eligible to receive a payment in proportion to the amount of income collected by CCS from suppliers as result of those customers’ transactions.

Activity by customers on 231 frameworks has contributed to the distribution to individual customers, with the lowest value payment threshold being set at £1k, resulting in just under 1,500 customers being eligible to receive a payment. These payments are not part of any written agreement and are non-contractual.

CCS has not made an assessment of the administrative costs that have been, or will be, incurred in operating this scheme.

CCS is considering its opportunities to reduce its levy rates on a case by case basis as new agreements are put in place. Frameworks do not provide a level of committed spend and therefore reducing levy rates across the board would incur an unnecessary degree of risk into CCS’s financial planning. CCS’s levy rates are the lowest of all Public Sector Buying Organisations, at an average of 0.7% across the whole portfolio.