I'm a construction industry consultant and have run small businesses in the local area since the mid 1980s.

A high proportion of construction industry output occurs in the public sector and in this market the services my business provide have been subject to the EU public procurement directive since 1993.

I educated myself on the directive before it was introduced and had a piece on it published in the Architects Journal in 1992. The stated intent of the directive was to open up public procurement to firms across EU borders so that firms in, say, Chippenham, would have the same opportunity of winning public contracts in Cadiz as they would in their home town, and vice versa.

By 1995 it was obvious to me that the directive was not working as intended and, far from opening up public procurement across Europe, was actually closing down public procurement in each member state in favour of large firms established in each state, at the expense of smaller firms such as mine.

I saw evidence of large UK firms getting fat on the back of UK public sector contracts and a divide opening up between such firms and smaller firms such as mine who I could see starting to wither on the vine and I wrote further articles for publication in the technical press warning of the dangers.

I joined the (now defunct) Association for Regulated Procurement (ARP) and attended meetings with the movers and shakers in the growing industry of public procurement regulation which hadn’t existed previously, all the time lobbying furiously on behalf of small firms.

I joined the Federation of Small Businesses but later resigned in disgust at their failure to address the problems I was highlighting. In short, we did everything in our power to compete in the public marketplace we had competed in previously, but to no avail. By 2008 we had to admit defeat and withdraw from bidding for public sector projects.

In the 15 years prior to this I estimate that we applied to bid between 230 and 250 UK public sector contracts and, although we were selected to tender on a few occasions, I don’t recollect winning any work whatsoever. Putting aside our lost tendering costs and lost opportunity costs, in hindsight what I really find difficult to understand is the loss to the UK of the expertise we were trained (partly by the UK tax payer) to provide.

Some may say that this is just the way of the world, and cite the case of supermarkets driving corner shops to the wall. However, there’s a huge difference – in our industry it’s EU-inspired legislation that’s been the driver, not any inherent public sector desire for doing business with the big boys.

In the late 1990s I attended a two-day conference on the then EU green paper on public procurement organised jointly by the ARP and the CBI, and Treasury officials there openly admitted that the EU public procurement directives were not achieving what they were designed to achieve but that the European Commission were adopting a ‘we’ve started so we’ll finish’ attitude and pushing on regardless.

One of the worst examples I’ve seen is a framework ‘minor works’ contract with an estimated value of £1billion over four years awarded to a single major UK construction company that now has access to all ‘minor works’ projects throughout the UK – ‘crumbs from the table’ type projects that had for many years previously formed the lifeblood of smaller builders based local to the sites. This is economic and social engineering on an industrial scale that our elected politicians would not even have known was happening, and even if they did would have been powerless to prevent.

It’s too late for me now, my career is nearly over, but For the sake of my children and their children, I want to be the first to light the bonfire under the mountain of EU-inspired legislation that will require repealing in the years following, with your assistance please, the UK voting to leave the EU.

GRAHAM STOW, Chippenham