LPG 04

Written submission from Peter Cumings (LPG 04)

Improving Local Government Procurement: Implementing Public Services Social Value Act 2012

In my work I support not for profit providers involved in public sector contracting; working daily on Local Authority tenders from across England. I am concerned that, overall, local authorities are being very slow in implementing PSSVA 2012.

Obviously it will take time to embed PSSVA practices into complex commissioning and procurement systems. However it is apparent that a significant number of local authorities have to date simply failed to respond at any level. Whilst my observations are anecdotal I am involved in local authority tendering on a daily basis. From my direct experience and from feedback gleaned from colleagues involved in local authority tendering support; I estimate social value questions appear in only half of ITTs and that and even where PSSVA compliant procurement exist they are  partial and stop gap.

I have worked on tenders in Scotland where the PSSVA equivalent, Community Benefits, has been up and running for some time. There are I feel lessons that could be learned from their approach to embedding Community Benefit clauses into public sector procurement. There are also some excellent examples of English local authorities that have progressed PSSVA on a strategic level. 

I would also comment that PSSVA thinking is yet to be fully integrated into national public sector procurement; NHS and in other areas such as Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Public sector bodies must pay attention to:

• Developing a policy for Social Value (SV) commissioning and procurement.
• Translating policies into verifiable requirements within a tender specification.
• Developing weighting to be applied to contribution to social value criteria.
• Developing Social Value criteria to judge the most advantageous tender.
• Embedding Social Value into sustainable commissioning strategies.
• Linking Social Value to corporate plans and sustainable communities’ strategy.
• Engaging supplier communities to prepare them for Social Value procurement.
• Pre-procurement market-testing enabling SV consultation with potential contractors
• Monitoring and performance management based on Social Value outcomes.
• Managing contracts to maximise realisation of Social Value.

September 2013