Social Value
The Council procures millions of pounds’ worth of goods and services for residents each year. We work to maximise the impact of this procurement for local the community, by requiring all our major contractors to deliver additional ‘Social Value’.
In addition to the goods and services they have been contracted to deliver, contractors are asked to invest in activities and outcomes that support wider community priorities. This means helping us to create more good jobs for local people by hiring and buying locally or investing in initiatives that support community wellbeing and a greener, cleaner borough.
The Policy and the attached toolkit for contractors provides the framework to ensure that Social Value is implemented consistently across different commissioning teams; secures more community benefits in line with council priorities; and that impact is effectively monitored and improved over time.
Social Value documents
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Implementation – frequently asked questions
The council’s Social Value Framework sets out three priority themes to support contractors to understand our strategic priorities, with examples of the sorts of activities and outputs the policy seeks to secure under each theme:
- Investment in local people: providing quality employment, work experience and apprenticeship opportunities – with additional consideration for opportunities created for those facing disadvantage in the labour market (including the long term unemployed, young people not in education, employment or training, care leavers, young offenders and those with learning disabilities or physical and mental health conditions);
- Investment in the local economy: supporting local job creation by sourcing goods and services from organisations with premises/operations based in the borough and supporting initiatives to build the capacity of local suppliers;
- Environmental sustainability: reducing waste and single-use plastics, promoting recycling and sustainable energy, supporting local growing and tree planting initiatives and other activities to improve local biodiversity, green spaces and air quality
Suppliers wishing to bid for works with the council will be asked to set out convincing Social Value proposals that support delivery of these priorities, which reflect our Borough Manifesto goals and Corporate Plan. The manifesto was the product of consultation with nearly 3,000 residents. Through this process, local people helped set a vision to ensure ‘no one is left behind’ over the next 20 years, with a set of strategic goals, targets and metrics to track progress as shown below:
Social Value proposals are required and evaluated as part of the assessment process from all bidders on all contracts worth over £100,000, with commissioners able to apply Social Value to lower value contracts on a discretionary basis.
This means that those bidding for major contracts to deliver goods, services and works for the council will be partly assessed on their proposals to deliver wider community benefits in line with the priorities set out in this policy, in addition to an assessment of the cost and quality of their bid.
Social Value commitments are ‘weighted’ at a minimum of 10% when evaluating potential contractors, with commissioning teams able to apply higher weightings on a discretionary basis up to a maximum of 20%. This is in line with government recommendations.
Read our Social Value Toolkit (see above under ‘Social Value documents’) for more detailed information on the policy, scoring methodology and expectations.
You can also contact our Social Value lead on socialvalue@lbbd.gov.uk for general enquiries and if outside of a procurement process.
If you are currently responding to a procurement/tender, then please send questions through the Procurement Portal.