Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 13 March 2019 were signed as a true record.  There were no matters arising.

Briefing note

The Board considered a briefing paper which provided an update on delivery against the Social Value Policy.  The policy had been adopted by Cabinet in February 2014 and incorporated the Public Service (Social Value) Act 2012.

There had been progress in several areas against the Social Value Policy since the 18 April 2018 report to this Board on 18 April 2018 including the following:

·  The City Council as a Planning Authority had been a lead Authority in the inclusion of Social Value themes in planning conditions on major planning applications.

·  The inclusion of clauses in local authority standard contracts which were intended to ensure that contractors were operating in a way that impacted favourably on society.

·  Consideration of additional Social Value requirements within the specifications and/or weighting the contract award criteria, which was now standard in City Council tender activity.

·  The Head of Procurement sits on the West Midlands Social Value Task Force Group and the National Social Value Taskforce and chairs a City Council Social Value Working Group.

·  Support of the Social Value Portal in the use of online solutions that allowed organisations to measure and manage the contribution that the organisation and supply chain makes to society.

·  Recommendations from the Corporate Peer Challenge in October 2018 which included additional areas for the review to team to focus on and would continue to monitor progress against the the Peer Challenge team recommendations.

·  Public Health awards in July 2018 to recognise, acknowledge and promote best practice in health work - one of the awards being the ‘Social Value Contributor’.

The briefing paper also summarised what had been achieved through skills and employment plans up to December 2018:

·  91 local business had benefitted from supply chain opportunities from major developments in the city

·  1310 local people had been employed on the sites

·  Over 2000 apprenticeship weeks had been worked, with a total of 158 apprentices

·  Over 2760 young people had attended site visits to major developments or received careers talks by developers.

Members of the Board questioned officers on a number of matters relating to the progress and delivery of the Policy including:

·  Monitoring the compliance of Social Value elements in contractual obligations when large contractors sub-contract work.

·  The process for challenging shortfall of progress against targets

·  The process for evaluating Social Value in respect of apprentices and breakdown of apprentices by Ward

·  If and how data was shared between partner agencies, and the benefit of doing so.

·  Use of the national TOMs (Themes, Outcomes, Measures) framework and an understanding of the sector ‘plug-ins’ that represented specific priorities within sectors.

Arising from the discussion, the Board agreed that, as it had been five years since adoption of the Social Value Policy, it would now be timely to review it.

RESOLVED that the Board:

(a)  Recommend that the Cabinet Member for Strategic Finance and Resources consider a review of the Social Value Policy

(b)  Request that officers encourage partner agencies to share data on Social Value

Briefing note

The Board noted a briefing paper which set out details of progress and delivery on the Procurement Strategy, national and regional developments and the future direction.

The Sub Regional Procurement Strategy had been approved by the Cabinet Member for Strategic Finance and Resources on 7 December 2015 (and was appended to the briefing note).  The Strategy adopted the 4 themes from the National Procurement Strategy (2014) which were: Making savings; supporting local authorities, demonstrating leadership, modernisation and progress against each of these themes were detailed in the briefing note.

In July 2018, a new National Procurement Strategy was launched. The Strategy had been streamlined to learn from the 2014 Strategy and focused on 3 main themes: showing leadership, behaving commercially; driving community benefits.  The overall distribution chart which was appended to the briefing note showed that, out of the 59 areas assessed, the City Council were ‘developing’ in 6 areas, ‘mature’ in 36 areas and a ‘leader’ in 17 areas.  Furthermore, when compared against both the overall benchmark and the West Midlands benchmark, this Authority compared well, scoring higher in all 11 section areas than comparators.

The Board questioned the officer on aspects of the document specifically in respect of the benchmark data including how we rank nationally in terms of local spending and, in this regard, it was agreed that this information would be circulated to members.  It was reported that the data would be compared with partners and would be used to influence what we do in the future.

Report of the Scrutiny Co-ordinator

The Board noted the work programme and requested:

·  To receive the CIL Working Group report in due course.

·  That Finance reports be received by the Board at the earliest opportunity to allow timely consideration

There were no outstanding issues.

Any other items of public business which the Chair decides to take as matters of urgency because of the special circumstances involved

There were no other items of public business