A Win-Win-Win Opportunity

‘Social value’ isn’t just another tender tick box. It’s a powerful opportunity for public and private sector partnerships to change lives and communities.

Tight budgets and cost efficiency mandates led to a culture of public sector contracts being awarded based solely on price. It’s a strategy that successfully serves the public purse but misses an opportunity to serve the wider needs of the community. And that’s why ‘social value’ has been placed at the heart of the government’s procurement policy.

Asking bidders to go above and beyond at no extra cost to the taxpayer, the Social Value Model takes a more holistic view of service provision to maximise value for money and provide a positive long term legacy from every project.

And with £284 billion spent on public service contracts last year, the potential for positive change is huge.

Along with the usual financial outcomes, the Social Value Act 2012 requires commissioners to factor in the improvement of an area’s economic, social and environmental wellbeing as part of the decision-making criteria when awarding contracts.

The social value offered must be relevant and proportionate to the contract, and to keep the playing field level between larger and smaller bidders, it’s the quality rather than quantity of provision that’s assessed. Examples could be local job creation, providing training opportunities for young people, assisting local charities, investing in small businesses, or supporting volunteering schemes.

While these wider benefits and non-financial outcomes have been a ‘consideration’ for some years, PPN 06/20 states that they must now be ‘explicitly evaluated’ and given a minimum of 10% weighting, which is often the difference between a winning and losing bid.

This is great news for forward thinking businesses who are now being incentivised and rewarded for doing the right thing.

The Modern Slavery Act highlights the unacceptable cost of cheap contracts paying less than a living wage, and Net Zero targets have raised awareness of the environmental destruction caused when we fly in consultants that we could have Zoomed.

But this Act expects more than corporate responsibility to prevent damage from these knock-on effects. It requires measurable corporate accountability to actually improve lives through procurement decisions. Instead of minimising the negative, we must enable the positive – ‘do no harm’ becomes ‘do more good’.

Public and private sector organisations are encouraged to create real partnerships, gain true understanding of local community issues, and deliver innovative and creative solutions that demonstrate genuine impact and tangible results.

If this begins as a community conversation, approached with real passion and innovation, it will inevitably lead to better results all round.

The Social Value Model provides a consistent approach for departments and suppliers as they help local communities in one of five areas: recovery from the impact of Covid-19, tackling economic inequality, supporting equal opportunities, fighting climate change or improving wellbeing.

By considering and consulting the community, the most beneficial area for sustainable change can be identified and a bespoke solution created to achieve local buy-in and a positive public response. There is no one size fits all – every community is different and ever-changing.

It’s understandable that some busy departments deal with these social value goals as an afterthought, but simply adopting rather than fully embracing these new policies is a short-sighted view.

Delivering social value creates a 3-way win-win scenario – the local community is enhanced with meaningful investment, the public sector partner achieves optimal results from every penny spent, and the selected provider wins the bid and has the opportunity to be part of powerful change.

And when approached intelligently, the ‘additional’ costs are naturally absorbed: where new staff are required, they are hired from under-represented groups from specific areas; where supplies are needed, small local businesses are utilised.

It’s not necessarily about spending more money – it’s about giving every decision a little more thought.

At Maintel, our staff are offered 3 days paid leave each year to take part in company or independent volunteering activities that they are passionate about. If they are holding a school STEM talk or refurbishing a local park, it’s because they genuinely care and know their input is invaluable.

In fact, every social value activity can now be given a monetary value. Performance against agreed standards can be measured, managed and reported through a National TOMs Framework (Themes, Outcomes and Measurements), and a Social Value Portal provides metrics and measurements that calculate the hidden social ‘worth’ of each activity in an easy-to understand format. 

Working together, the public and private sector can deliver billions of pounds worth of social improvement that helps solve the most pressing local problems.

Maintel has already created a range of tailored responses to social value tender requests. While some customers begin the process with a clear vision of their desired community outcomes, we’ve designed others in partnership with customers, and have recently employed a Social Value Specialist to further improve customer satisfaction along with offering the most innovative bids.

Increased social engagement and community betterment is a positive and potentially rewarding change for all of us, and we’re excited about getting to know our customers’ communities better, and the good we can do when we work together.