Social Value

Traditionally when evaluating tenders they have been judged on the cost of the contract and the quality of what is being delivered. The concept of social value introduces a third key element which looks at the wider benefits that are being offered to society.

By this we mean, in addition to the contract itself, how will it benefit the residents, communities and small businesses within the borough.

Social value can be split into three parts:

• Environmental – How will the contract help the environment and leave a better planet for future generations? It could be through donating to reforestation initiatives, encouraging greener forms of transport or maybe working with your own supply chain to help reduce their carbon emissions.
  
  
• Economic – How will the contract help the local economy and make the ‘Doncaster Pound’ go further? It could be through employing more local people, using local businesses in your supply chains or maybe increasing the percentage of staff paid the Real Living Wage.

• Social - How will the contract provide a positive impact on society? It could be through focusing your recruitment on unemployed armed forces veterans or those that are homeless. It could be through donations or volunteering hours to community based projects, or maybe working on initiatives to reduce the gender pay gap.

Doncaster Council work with a company called Social Value Portal to assess the social value element of tenders and bids. They also monitor the delivery of the commitments that winning bidders have made and ensure that the benefits are realised.

The Social Value Portal use a framework called The National TOMS. This is a set of Themes, Outcomes and Measures used to quantify social value.

There are five themes (Jobs, Growth, Social, Environment and Innovation) and 38 linked outcomes. Each outcome has a measure which help to calculate the social value that will be generated by each procurement.

For more information please see the link to their website in the Downloads & Resources section below.

We want to embed social value into our contracting process to help meet our Borough Strategy of creating Thriving People, Places & Planet.

The Wellbeing Wheel below shows the six long-term goals the Council is working towards and we have selected a set of TOMS which align to these spokes.

  

Our TOMS focus on making Doncaster:

• Greener and Cleaner - Protecting and enhance the local and global environment to improve wellbeing.
• Fair and Inclusive - Reducing inequalities and improving access to social and economic opportunities for all. 
• Prosperous and Connected - A stronger, greener and fairer economy that provides good, well-paid jobs and is supported by improved transport and active travel infrastructure and access to good broadband.
• Safe and Resilient – Making residents feel safe and communities are more resilient to challenges and emergencies.
• Healthy and Compassionate – Creating a compassionate borough where collectively everyone is supported to add life to years and years to life.
• Skilled and Creative - Residents have improved skills and a creative culture supports wellbeing, business success and solutions to the borough’s challenges.

That is why all procurements above the public procurement threshold will contain a minimum of 10% social value as part of the evaluation weighting score.

For more information, please see our Social Value Policy in the Resources & Downloads section below.

For more information about our Borough Strategy, Doncaster Delivering Together please visit Team Doncaster

A piece of legislation came into force in January 2013 called the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012.

This placed a requirement on “… public authorities to have regard to economic, social and environmental well-being in connection with public services contracts”.

In practice, this means that when the Council contract with third parties social value must be considered alongside the quality and cost elements.

The most important to thing to note is that Social Value is not just for the public sector. We encourage suppliers from the private and voluntary sectors to build social value into their own contracts to multiply the positive effects we can all have on society.

If you’d like to work with local groups to help deliver your social value commitments please see our ‘Links to Our Community’ section for a list of organisations to work with.

You will find a Do’s and Don’ts guide in the Resources & Downloads section to help you with your bid.

Under Construction.

Under Construction.