Council chiefs and business leaders have teamed up to lobby the Government and the European Union (EU) to reform European procurement rules, The MJ can reveal.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has branded the EU's procurement rules ‘tortuous, convoluted and costly', and called for a ‘significant increase in the ludicrously-low £170,000 procurement threshold' – above which local government has to open up contract bids to the entire EU.