Government urged to set up formal registration of competent PPE suppliers.
With over 135 years of safety experience, its own UKAS-accredited product assurance lab, a 400,000sqft National Distribution Centre and a team based in China, Arco has been at the forefront of the most significant recent global emergencies, including the response to both SARS and Ebola outbreaks. When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in the UK, the company played a key role in the response, navigating the global supply chain restrictions that led to an international shortage of certain types of PPE. Arco’s product and supply chain specialists worked quickly to source, procure and distribute over 140 million face masks, 18 million gloves, over 50,000 coveralls and 5,000,000 hygiene products to the NHS, ambulance services, other public health bodies, local authorities and critical industries. Arco’s work during the crisis saw the company named SHP’s Most Influential Team in health & safety for 2020.
The first stage of the crisis saw a severe global shortage of PPE at a time of exceptional demand and a poor centrally coordinated response. Early in the pandemic there were many examples of a broken supply chain with frontline workers left without critical PPE. A number of suppliers, like Arco, were holding stock but unable to work with the Government and its agents to supply PPE where it was needed the most. More recently, a National Audit Office Report has highlighted examples of PPE supply contracts being awarded opaquely to organisations with no history of PPE manufacture and supply, who were ultimately unable to fulfil orders. In some cases, non-compliant products were supplied that increased the risks to the public, care home staff and NHS workers. Much money was spent unnecessarily.
To address these issues and ensure future preparedness, Arco has developed a set of recommendations based on its experiences during 2020, set out in its Position Paper. Key highlights include:
Thomas Martin, Arco’s Chairman said: “2020 will be a year that none of us forget. It has been a year of sadness and uncertainty for so many people. Our core purpose is to help keep people safe and we responded immediately the pandemic was declared, working 24/7 to help make sure those at the frontline of the response were properly protected.
“From the outset, we were both frustrated with the procurement system and deeply concerned by some of the simple mistakes made across the UK through a lack of experience of procuring the PPE needed. The NAO report and findings very much reflect this experience. As an established safety business, we feel it’s our duty to report on our experiences and to support the Government in continuing to help deal with the pandemic. We urge the Government to act on our recommendations to ensure we can all be better prepared for any future emergencies.”
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It is helpful that the NAO and Arco are shedding light on the government’s dreadful incompetence in managing the PPE supply for pandemics. As an NHS H&S manager it was hugely frustrating in the early days of the pandemic to be told not to purchase PPE because the ‘huge strategic supply’ was more than adequate. By the time we realised this was an empty promise we had to compete with global health systems and numerous others including the many opportunists to source PPE ourselves. The slease in awarding huge contracts to friends of Tory MPs for useless PPE is a shameful betrayal of NHS and other workers who were put at avoidable risk for personal gain.
The government were in a no win situation; every country was trying to buy PPE; there was a shortage, and yes the procurement system was very poor, but when your back is against the wall, you have to do everything to ensure PPE is available, including known associates.
The main failure was that PPE through the NHS procurement system should have been available and it wasn’t.
ARCO did a good job, but also made a lot of money, like so many other PPE suppliers
I have to agree with Harry and I think you are far too kind to the government. Whether you choose PPE, track & trace, the app that failed miserably, the illogical tier system, the schools & exams fiasco, etc., etc., their record of mismanaging the Pandemic betrays gross incompetence at the highest level. Lucrative contracts worth billions placed with companies totally incapable of delivering the services required, but politically aligned with the government. They prevaricated, took wrong decisions, gave the public confusing advice and left front line workers having to protect themselves with bin bags instead of proper PPE. And of course, now they are claiming that we managed to start using the vaccine first because we are so much cleverer than the rest of Europe, and, of course, thanks to Brexit!!
Not really, the government did very little to contact reliable and well-establish UK PPE suppliers. A lot of procurement was done through brokers who took huge commission on organising Chinese imports for PPE that wasn’t certified to UK standards.
The UK has official PPE distribution groups with many companies with years of experience and expertise not even contacted, many of whom were holding plenty of stock. It’s another cost cutting shortcoming. If NHS trusts had contracts with their local suppliers and distributors they would have been serviced and supplied 1000x better than they were. Instead the government cut costs on cheap bottom line contracts and spend billions fixing their shortcomings when it goes wrong.
We talk about Brexit providing an opportunity to grow local economies and businesses, yet we run straight to foreign importers charging extortionate prices for unsuitable products whilst not even contacting UK suppliers. It’s a joke.
The presumption UK PPE suppliers profited off this crisis is a misconception, all large scale government contracts were distributed to foreign importers and companies with links to government officials without any PPE experience.
Also pretty sure Arco shut-down within the first lock-down, so not sure how they would have operated anyway. The government needs to award contracts to local suppliers and have stringent plans in place for issues of this magnitude, including communication with the suppliers/distributors on how these situations should be handled.