Delivery Information

NHS Supply Chain prides itself on providing a rapid and efficient delivery service to our customers. We aim to deliver all standard requisitions within 48 hours of receipt of your order, subject to your preferred delivery days.

To guarantee that we are able to provide you with this service, please ensure that you input all orders by 4:15pm two days prior to your preferred delivery date, i.e. if your preferred delivery day is Wednesday, you will need to submit your order by 4:15pm on the preceding Monday.

Submitting your order as early as possible will ensure that we can meet your requirements.

We deliver to a wide variety of healthcare locations from hospitals to small GP clinics and dental surgeries.

Your Regional Customer Services Manager will be able to offer you guidance and support on setting up a new delivery location and arrange any survey of the site which may be required. If we do not think that your chosen delivery site is suitable, they will discuss this with you and help to identify an alternative.

We also help you to manage your delivery profile by periodically deactivating any unused or redundant delivery locations. To reactivate these simply contact your Customer Services team.

Once a delivery site has been agreed, NHS Supply Chain will agree on a fixed delivery day on which you will receive your order. This will be known as your preferred delivery day.

Please note that dependant on the overall volume or nature of your requirements; you may be allocated more than one preferred delivery day per week. If this is the case you will be notified upon placing your order.

Where appropriate you will be allocated a specific delivery time for each delivery location. If this is the case, our drivers will aim to deliver within 30 minutes of the agreed delivery time. For your convenience, the delivery time can be allocated either inside or outside of normal working hours. Please contact your Regional Customer Service Manager for more details.

To assist our drivers on the day, customers are required to provide staff to accept deliveries at the delivery location. Deliveries will be offloaded at the agreed points of delivery by way of a tail lift service. Please note that our delivery service does not include the manual transportation of goods to other areas within your site. All deliveries will be accompanied by a delivery note.

All customer orders are packed in plastic bags or cardboard boxes and delivered on NHS Supply Chain roll cages for ease of transportation around your site.

Subject to your order, some roll cages may contain goods that may need to be delivered to more than one requisition point at your site. Such roll cages are termed “mixed cages”. A mixed roll cage will be labelled to clearly detail all of the requisition points contained within it.

If required, deliveries can be made on pallets in strict agreement with NHS Supply Chain.

Whilst we endeavour to ensure that deliveries are accurate occasionally errors do occur which is why we ask customers to check their deliveries to ensure they are correct. Along with your delivery, you should receive:

Delivery documentation
This needs to be signed and the time of delivery recorded, along with any discrepancies in the number of containers received.

Priced Advice Note (packed with each individual requisition).
This document will contain details of the products that have been selected and dispatched, together with the prices charged.

It is your responsibility to check your delivery for quantity and quality in accordance with these two documents.

If you do identify a delivery error, please report it to customer services within the following timescales:

Error relating to the number of containers delivered
At the point of delivery to the driver when signing the delivery documentation.

Order discrepancies
At the earliest opportunity and within a maximum of 3 working days.

When reporting an error to our customer service team, you will be asked to provide the following information:

Requisition number
This is your unique customer reference number allocated to you when you place each new order with us.
Requisition point.
This is your unique account number, specific to your department, which helps our team to identify the specific order point for each product.
Catalogue product codes
These are unique codes allocated to each product within our catalogue. We often refer to these as National Product Codes (NPCs). Please ensure that you have each code and quantity to hand.

Our team will then issue you with a call log number. If your order was incomplete, missing items will be sent on the next available delivery day with a credit raised for the original items, pending the outcome of our investigations.

If you wish to follow up on a call logged with Customer Services, please quote the call log number to enable easy identification of the call details.

As these items remain the property of NHS Supply Chain, all roll cages should be made available for collection from your delivery location within a reasonable time after delivery. Container recycling enables us to reduce costs and ensure the best environmental practice, offering long-term benefits to you. Roll cages are to be used for the transportation of NHS Supply Chain goods only.

See our Useful Links section for more information.

We recognise that occasionally situations occur when you may need clinical products in a hurry. At NHS Supply Chain, we aim to provide emergency deliveries wherever possible.

In the event of a clinical emergency, we offer a responsive and reliable service for all standard products listed in our catalogue. These orders will be processed and delivered within a maximum of five hours of being received. We also cater for any urgent demands for products available via our Blue Diamond route as well as eDirect products. These orders will be dealt with on an individual basis with the aim of supplying within 24 hours of your request. This service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at no additional cost to you.

See our Useful Links section for more information.

In the event that you require a product urgently for a same or next day delivery, a special pick can be arranged. As special picks are more costly to process and deliver, these should be kept to a minimum. In the event that a request is made without a valid reason i.e. it is not directly related to patient care, then an additional charge of £35 may be levied, in addition to any courier costs incurred.

Please contact your Customer Services team at the earliest opportunity with a reason for the request, who will inform you if your request can be accommodated and what, if any, charges will be applied.

These are 48 hour deliveries requested outside of your normal preferred delivery date. These are more costly to process and deliver; therefore you should contact your Customer Services team in the first instance stating a reason for your request. In the event that a request is made without a valid reason, an additional charge may be levied. You may be charged for the delivery depending on the route.