SMALL businesses are being offered help in bidding for a share of the £220bn of public sector contracts awarded each year through the launch of a free online training course.

The Winning the Contract online procurement initiative was launched yesterday, and shows businesses how to identify business opportunities, explains the procurement process, and shows how to submit tenders. It also guides companies through the bidding process.

The training course, unveiled by Small Business Minister Lord Davies and Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was hailed as a key step in helping the UK economy return to long-term growth.

It is open to all businesses in the UK free of charge, regardless of their size or sector.

Winning the Contract was also hailed as an important move in the Buy North-East campaign, run jointly by The Northern Echo and the North- East Chamber of Commerce (NECC), which encourages greater collaboration between regional businesses and local authorities to benefit the North-East.

Statistics from the NECC show that the regional economy would grow by £1.35bn and an extra 6,000 direct jobs would be created, if the public sector spent an additional one per cent each year to 2016 contracting services from the North-East, rather than outside the region.

Ross Smith, head of policy and research at the NECC, hailed the launch of Winning the Contract.

“It’s great to see the Government seems to be taking the role of procurement in helping economic development seriously, as we’ve been arguing through our Buy North-East campaign,” he said.

“Helping suppliers get better at bidding for contracts is one part of putting this into practice. It needs to be matched by reform to make procurement simpler and smarter in recognising the firms that will provide the biggest all round benefits for taxpayers’ money.”

Launching the service, Lord Davies said: “Opening up public sector procurement to a wider range of suppliers provides opportunities for small businesses as the UK economy heads towards growth.”

Mr Byrne added: “Small and medium-sized businesses are the engine-room of our economy. We want them to harness the spending power of Government to grow their businesses and create jobs.

“This course will help those businesses to compete effectively for Government contracts, locking in the recovery and strengthening businesses throughout the country.”