At Cadent we’re passionate about the people we work with. Whether it’s our teams of skilled engineers and talented staff, contractors who help us with essential work or our customers who work alongside us to help facilitate what we do – we’re proud to work with some truly fantastic people and organisations.

The companies that we work with help us create a sustainable and reliable supply chain, so we’re always on the lookout for potential suppliers. On this page you’ll find information on how to become a supplier, as well as our expectations.

Our supplier values

Working with new suppliers is important to us and we’re always excited and passionate about working with new people. When it comes to making decisions on new suppliers, we have four main goals, these include aiming to buy goods and services:
•    Competitively
•    Economically
•    Ethically
•    Efficiently

Those goals provide the core of our purchasing values and inform the decisions we make surrounding our suppliers. Further to this, we also follow UK legislation and the requirements of the Utilities Contracts Regulations when working with new suppliers.

How to become a Cadent supplier

If you or your business is interested in becoming a new supplier – that’s great news! The even better news is that the process is simple. We currently use the Achilles Utilities Vendor Database (UVDB) when looking for our potential suppliers and most of our purchases requires suppliers be registered to the UVDB.

In order to ensure that our suppliers fit our values, in some cases we also need proof of further compliance around:

  • Health and safety
  • Quality
  • Environmental capabilities
  • Corporate social responsibility
  • A higher level of assurance using the Achilles Verify process


Our terms and conditions

If you’re interested in working with us as one of our suppliers, please see Achilles Supplier Solutions for more information.

Our supplier expectations

As with all successful working relationships, we like to set out our expectations from the beginning to help ensure our suppliers know what to expect from us and vice versa.
Below, you’ll find our Supplier Code of Conduct, the idea of this document is to help us share our expectations and fundamental principles which should extend into the supply chain. Our business relationships are incredibly important to us and we know that, working together, we can help create a more socially and environmentally responsible supply chain.

View our Supplier Code of Conduct

Already a supplier? 

If you’re already a Cadent supplier, you’ll find all the relevant information about our supply chain changes in the documents below.

Guide to our purchasing process​

Ariba Network for Suppliers

Ariba Supplier Frequently Asked Questions

Your guide to onboarding and sourcing activities

Your guide to transacting in Ariba