About us

We’re a not-for-profit central purchasing body working in the public sector. We create frameworks and dynamic purchasing models for use by our customers.  We’re a membership organisation that provides options and solutions for public bodies that are looking to procure their contracts in a compliant and efficient way, mainly focusing on the housing sector, however we work with other public bodies too, such as blue light services and the education sector.

Our relationship centric approach makes us unique as we put the customer at the heart of everything we do.  We make sure we’re easy to do business with, solution focussed and we add value each and every time a customer works with us. That’s why we have grown to 57 member organisations that work with us, and we’re also used by other customers on a non-membership basis.  We have lots of repeat business, we act differently to our competitors – we’re supportive, transparent, credible and we always act with integrity.

We’re more than just a procurement organisation

We reinvest our surplus back into the industry through many different ways, as we’re passionate about the sector we work in. We provide a wide-ranging suite of training courses that is heavily subsidised by SEC to both our customers and suppliers. 

We engage our stakeholders through insight research groups that work together collaboratively to tackle some of the biggest challenges our peers are facing; by providing guidance and information that is shared with our customers, provided by experts within their relevant field.

We also support our customers’ local communities by providing donations to their community projects, charities and services through our Foundations programme which reviews nominations annually to enable us to give back to our members.

SEC are involved with the Cabinet Office and other government departments such as the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero (DESNZ),  Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Homes England and we’ve also been appointed as the Chair for the official Communities of Practice for London and the South East – Housing Sector Group. This means we’re at the forefront of helping shape and influence Policy and Legislation.  We also collaborate with other agencies and stakeholders such as The Chartered Institute of Housing, The Housing Forum, Constructing Excellence, RICS, CIOB, The National Housing Procurement Association and many more.

We run different events for our members, suppliers and wider network that include topic specific conferences, product launch events, alliance networks and our annual conference. Our Annual Conference is the ‘go-to’ event for all of our network and has been held at the London Stadium in recent years.  This has grown in content and delegates and is something that the sector talks about for a long time after the event!