There's much talk about public sector cuts - which are very real and have a day to day impact on the work of BDA - and one would be forgiven for thinking that the public sector had effectively closed down for business. However, even with tighter budgets and less staff the public sector has a responsibility to provide public services and there are still a large number of procurement opportunities out there for providing everything from meat products, to advertising, to gas fitting and beyond.

Through the Enterprising Barnsley programme, BDA have been working hard recently to start sharing some of the large volume of public sector procurement opportunities with local businesses. Despite the wide availability of digital information, it can be hard as a business to find the time or the resource to research what contracts are out there, whether you meet the criteria and actually get the tender together. Also, often smaller businesses lack all of the requisite skills to pitch for this work and need to find associates and partners to work with the win the contracts.

The system is still in its infancy and we are working to get the information sorted by sector/theme and will in due course be proactively circulating new opportunities via a newsletter. In the meantime, we have been promoting it via Twitter (@BarnsleyBiz) and Linked In (Barnsley Business Group) and our Development Managers will circulate information, when they can, directly to businesses. There's also comments sections under each listing on the opportunities board so if businesses need partners or information to help them tender for work, they can ask for it here.

Feedback so far has been positive, and we've got everything crossed for lots of local businesses winning some of this work! Let us know what you think of the service which can be found here www.enterprisingbarnsley.co.uk/opportunities ... information also feeds across to the main BDA website so you access it here too.