Submission in response to:

Social Value in Government Procurement consultation - 10th June 2019

The Edge is a voluntary built-environment think tank and is multi-disciplinary in a landscape remarkable for the number of single-discipline institutions it contains. We stand for being:

·     Interdisciplinary: bringing built environmental professionals together, inclusively along with others who share their concerns.

·     Open and creative: working across all disciplines with competitors and collaborators.

·     Strategic in approach: encouraging accessible and shared knowledge and seeking to connect place, practice, policy and research.

·     Visionary: in identifying the issues and in promoting effective and urgent responses to both local and global challenges.

·     Professional: developing a broad-based ethic of responsibility to social and environmental demands based on an equitable global framework.

·     Business-like:  furthering the skills and capacity of the UK construction industry to promote prosperity and deliver a better built environment.

Response:

We very much support the intent of the Social Value Act but are aware that its application is still relatively limited[1] due to lack of awareness and guidance. We therefore welcome this consultation and the proposal to specifically include social value in contract awards criteria. This should make it clearer to procurement teams that social value should be considered alongside cost when awarding contracts, and it should prompt bidders to examine opportunities.

We would stress that the Hackitt Review recommended a radical rethink of the approach to procurement. This consultation is one opportunity to make a change, and we therefore have serious concerns about the following aspects:

-        The consultation proposals are limited to central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. We do not think it is appropriate to exclude other public bodies, particularly local authorities: they represent a large proportion of total public expenditure; they have direct links with communities, and therefore the ability for significant social value impacts; they often lack in-house procurement expertise and/or resources, and would therefore benefit from more guidance and consistency on best practice.

-        P4 of the consultation document states “Procuring authorities are not required to use any of the themes and policy outcomes and it is for them to determine whether or not to do so“. This has the potential to completely undermine the intent of the proposals; the social value themes in this proposal are broad and all contracts should find at least some of them valid. There should be a clear statement that social value should be integrated in the awards criteria on all contracts; the definition and monitoring should follow the framework of proposed themes, and while not using the proposed metrics may be acceptable on some contracts, other metrics reflecting the same themes should then be used, with a clear rationale to do so. 

-        We broadly agree with the themes proposed to incorporate social value in awards criteria, although they are limited in some areas e.g. social capital, health and wellbeing. However, we have strong concerns about the metrics themselves, which are restricted to the impacts of the project itself (i.e. impacts on the supply chain, and direct impacts on its environment during the project duration). While we do not object to these, this is an extremely narrow interpretation of the value that projects can bring, particularly in the built environment where they can influence long-term environmental, social and health and wellbeing outcomes in the long-term and for a much broader community than the supply chains alone. We urge a rethink of the proposals to include briefing, design, construction and outcome performance.

-        The consultation specifically excludes projects with a budget over £10m, on the basis that these are covered by the Balanced Scorecard approach. It is understood that some tailoring may be required for projects of smaller budget. The approach should be as consistent as possible in order to avoid threshold effects, loopholes and inefficiencies if a contract budget changes, and un-necessary complications for bidders and procurement teams. One example of inconsistency in the current proposals is how environmental aspects are considered:

o   current proposals i.e. for projects under £10m: by reference to the 25 Year Environment Plan (YEP), which does not cover climate change / energy / carbon considerations

o   Balanced Scorecard: resource use, waste to landfill, and energy / carbon, without other environmental aspects which are prominent in the 25 YEP, such as biodiversity and water quality.

There should be as much consistency in the proposals with the Balanced Scorecard, and a further ambition to revise the Scorecard in the future to include broader environmental aspects and make it a requirement (not an option) to demonstrate long term value across social and environmental impacts (as well as economic).

END

Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information at contact@edgedebate.com .

the Edge 10th June 2019

[1] House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, 2017 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/1031/1031.pdf