Agenda item

The Mayor submitted a report for Executive’s consideration.

The purpose of the report was to set out the impact of the Council’s Social Value Charter following its adoption 12 months ago. Successful delivery of the 42 commitments within the Social Value charter had the potential to have a significant impact on all the Council Plan ambitions. Each of the 42 commitments had been aligned to the Council Plan ambition it most directly linked to, with many cutting across two or more of the ambitions. The table at paragraph 1.1 set out the elements of the commitments within the Charter that had been delivered to date.

As local authorities were required to become increasingly financially self-reliant, many were looking at how to make their limited resources go ever further while still maintaining the quality and breadth of services.

Councils, along with the rest of the public sector were being encouraged to use procurement to achieve wider financial and non-financial outcomes, including improving wellbeing of individuals, communities and the environment by making social value a decision-making criterion when awarding contracts.

Continued implementation of a Social Value Charter had the potential to deliver the a number of benefits including encouraging a more diverse range of suppliers to work with the Council and its partners, including the participation of small and medium sized enterprises (SME's), Voluntary and Community Sector organisations, and local suppliers in general as well as promoting fair employment practices that ensured workforce equality and diversity within supply chains.

The Council established a working group to oversee activity to embed the commitments within the Social Value Charter which had met every four weeks during 2024/5. The achievements of that group were summarised in section one of the report and the table in the report set out the planned activity over the next 12 months to ensure it continued to drive implementation of the Charter. Those activities included:

·         Explore opportunities to seek a town wide systematic approach to social value exploitation within partnership working across the town through the re-established Town Board for partnership working.

·         Reflect the new Procurement Act Social Value obligations and within Council action to exploit opportunities and consider the national model.

·         Launch the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

·         Support a bid for funding to improve support to international families to access employment opportunities by assisting them to get qualifications achieved in their home countries, recognised.

·         Reestablishing provision of meaningful work experience opportunities within the Council.

·         Use the increased capacity within the Procurement team to increase visibility of social value achieved through procurement and strengthen monitoring of compliance.

Work with communities had identified there was a significant number of people that wanted to volunteer in outdoor activities such as street cleaning/litter picking. They could see an instant benefit to their voluntary work, as well as getting the opportunity to meet up outdoors with likeminded people and undertake some physical activity. Volunteers could also bring children and get them involved.

The Deputy Mayor queried of social value could include work experience of schools. The Mayor responded that the impact section of Executive reports needed to reflect such things going forward.

OPTIONS

The Council could choose not to continue to deliver the commitments in its Social Value Charter. It would still be compliant with its duties in relation to Best Value. This was not recommended as an option as the Council would miss the opportunity to deliver the wider benefits to the organisation and the town that could be achieved through social value, while still achieving Best Value from its commissioning and procurement activity.

AGREED that Executive:

1.    NOTE the progress made in the last 12 months to implement the commitments set out in the Social Value Charter as set out in section one of the report

2.    ENDORSE the continued implementation of activity to embed the charter over the next 12 months, which is summarised in section four for the report.

REASONS

Social Value had the potential to release millions of pounds of public money for community benefit and support regeneration of the town. It encouraged smarter spending to not only deliver a proposed service but also addressed social, economic, and environmental issues in the local community. Continued implementation of the commitments in the Charter would ensure the Council’s significant procurement spend had a positive, measurable impact on the communities it served.