As a result of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 there has been a radical shift in thinking around public sector procurement. Speaking at our Frameworks conference Gerard Toplass, Executive Chairman of Pagabo noted how the public sector is “Moving from acknowledgement of social value into accounting for it.”

At Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS trust social value is key to their organisational strategy, Adam Smith, Head of Capital Development discussed the trust’s social value spending, he said “We have a huge charity, which has resources around the billion mark”. The trust is currently undergoing massive growth. Smith revealed that “St Thomas’ campus has 250,000sqm of expansion, on the royal street a huge amount of student accommodation and an outpatient facility is planned for there.” [emaillocker id=”71749″]

The trust is developing a giant new Biomedical cluster, which Smith described as being “3 and a half times the Shard” in scale. The Trust are making major investment in the Evelina Children’s hospital, enabled by the social value of commercial developments. They also are investing heavily in medical technology, having recently built the largest MRI machine in London. 

The trust’s incredible growth has been enabled by their membership of the Kings’ Health Partners, a health science organisation formed in partnership with a number of other London trusts and Kings College. Together they teach over 30,000 students, attained over £200m in research grants and have combined turnover of £3.7bn. 

Red Kite Learning Trust, an academy group is hoping to incorporate social value into their development of new schools, Steve Howell, the Trust’s Finance Director outlined their expansion plans, saying that they are “Hoping to build two schools in the next 2 years and hoping to partner and build 2 sixth form colleges.”

The process of procurement for schools has changed due to the legacy of the 2010 Coalition government’s embrace of academisation, which Howell claimed has created a  “Dispersed system”. Around 8000 of the 25,000 schools in England have become academies outside of local authority control, meaning that they have greater control over their procurement.  

Howell mentioned that they were still on the “Early part” of their Social Value transformation, pointing out that the majority of schools lack procurement experts. Howell spoke on a core obstacle for schools implementing this agenda, he said,  “There is no mention of social value in the Department of Education school’s buying guide”. Despite this Howell expected there to be a change in the Department, he said “I suspect the department will lead us down the social value route 

Howell linked the social value and green agendas, he said that Red Kite would “Love to spend more on renewable energy, we have a consultant helping us with solar panels and LED light replacements, the two top spend to save projects for school”.  Red Kite have utilised improvements to insulation and biomass boilers as ways to further their environmental policies. 

The University of Wolverhampton has been focusing on Social Value whilst redeveloping it’s estates, Emma Hesbrook, their  Estates Procurement Manager described the major developments, she said, “We look to be renowned as a university that makes an impact in the region” .In the last five years the university has spent £130m on developing its estates, and has incorporated social value directly into its plans, Hesbrook said “Our strategic plan intrinsically seeks to achieve social value”. 

The University has been promoting opportunities in the built environment sector from the social value generated by their estates development, Hesbrook described how their partnership with the firm ISG is “Delivering both our £26m school of architecture and built environment scheme”. The scheme has been highly successful at generating social value, with all of the students participating going directly into work after graduating 

Hesbrook praised the university’s record on climate issues, she said that “We’ve always factored in the environmental factors and we are pushing our consultants to consider more sustainable materials”. The University also works directly with developers to formulate it’s KPIs for social value, after they award a contract. 

The Panel were unanimous in believing that the industry needs to adopt an industry standard for social value, with Howell suggesting “There is a case for a quality mark for social value.”

Hesbrook concurred, she said “I think it would help us to evaluate tenders, are you really comparing apples to apples because that’s what we need to do as procurement professionals.” Social value suffers from being a nebulous term, and having a stricter definition will only be beneficial in improving outcomes for developers. [/emaillocker]