Contractual obligations

NOTE: Currently the UK government’s timber procurement policy requires its departments to actively seek to purchase legal and sustainable timber and timber product. This will change from April 1 2009, when the policy will demand, that all timber and wood-derived products must be from independently verifiable legal and sustainable sources or FLEGT-licensed timber only. This page describes the contractual obligations until April 1 2009.

Please refer to the Policy update page here for the amended model specification and contract conditions.

Contractual obligations (until April 1 2009)

Actively seeking to procure legal timber and timber products is a mandatory government policy, which applies to all central government departments, agencies and sponsored bodies. Compliance can be achieved by ensuring that the contracts between a department, agency or public body and their timber and timber products suppliers have a Supplementary Condition of Contract regarding Timber and Wood Derived Products.

The full text of a model Supplementary Condition of Contract is available here.

The Supplementary Condition of Contract regarding Timber and Wood Derived Products includes clauses that:

• Define timber as any product that at some point in its creation requires the felling of trees and subsequent use of the timber that was obtained by the felling.
• Define recycled timber as recovered wood that is no longer used for the purpose for which its source trees were originally felled
• Define legal timber as that which was felled by those who had legal right to use the forest, who complied with relevant national laws and codes of practice and who have paid all relevant royalties and taxes
• Prohibit use of CITES-protected virgin timber, unless the supplier has complies with CITES requirements that permit trading
• Require all timber procured by the contractor to be legal (for that particular contract)

Tenderers should also be given the option of offering sustainable timber as an addition to the minimum specification. This ‘variant specification’ includes all the minimum criteria as well as a requirement that a minimum of 70% of the material (by category) is from a sustainable forest source, which can be either recycled wood and/or virgin timber from an adequately managed forest source.

When putting together a contract,  the variant specification should be a separate document from the basic specification in order to avoid confusion, and should be listed on the form of tender as an optional document for return. Tenderers who wish to offer sustainable timber should sign and return the form as part of their tender. Otherwise, they should strike out reference to it in the form of tender.

The full text of a model variant specification is available here.

When preparing invitations to tender (ITTs), government procurement personnel should include a paragraph describing the legal requirements for timber, as well as the option of supplying sustainable timber.

The full text of a model Invitation to Tender (ITT) paragraph is available here.

When a supplier indicates that he cannot perform the contract conditions, including the condition to supply legal timber, then that bid should not be considered further.