Understand Social Value and Wellbeing at our business event, hosted by the Institute of Directors. 9.30 to 11 am, on the 20th of June 2024.
https://www.iod.com/events/social_value_and_wellbeing_act_20242417499199/
The new Procurement Act becomes law in October 2024 … and the way we do business will change forever.
The reforms will shake up and improve our outdated procurement system, so that every procurement pound spent, gives greater value for money for our public services. Public procurement will change forever when the Procurement Act 2023, with its Social Value and Wellbeing principles, becomes mandatory law in October 2024.
WHAT DOES SOCIAL VALUE AND WELLBEING REALLY MEAN?
SOCIAL VALUE is the extent to which your organisation positively impacts your community, by Social, Economic, and Environmental aspects, which are measured by a specific set of government metrics, especially when you bid for public and private contracts.
WELLBEING is the government’s new framework for measuring your organisation’s commitment to the wellbeing of your people, and of your wider community, both social and business.
Social aspects include community development, education, health and social justice etc.
Economic aspects include economic growth, income distribution, poverty, unemployment etc.
Environmental aspects include emission levels, pollution, conservation, recycling etc. They represent the 3 pillars that contribute to the overall health and sustainability of our communities and planet that we all live on that the UN created back in 1992 with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) that the 193 member countries are all trying to embed by 2030.
As most businesses are within a supply chain involving public bodies, or large private organisations, they need to understand and adapt to these procurement law changes. However far removed you might think you are; business will always be an eco-system of interconnected supply chains.
Start-ups, scale-ups, and SME’s stand to benefit the most. The biggest change of all is that the decision-making criteria for awarding contracts, is no longer driven solely by price, nor quality, nor history, nor personal relationships. No longer does the ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ win, but the ‘Most Advantageous Tender’. The only point of difference in contract bids will be the quality of the social value and wellbeing embedded within it.
Smaller, more agile, and innovative businesses are now more able to dazzle procurers as they embed a high quality of social value and wellbeing into their contract bids. This represents a fabulous opportunity for smaller businesses to drive innovation, deliver better outcomes, and redefine the business landscape in their favour.
BUSINESSES WHICH IGNORE THE LEGAL CHANGES RISK LOSING WORK!
Successful bids will have to embed social value. Businesses which ignore the changes to the procurement law risk losing existing work and losing out to Social Value Ready competitors. The degree to which a business embraces this new law, will directly impact their capacity to thrive and grow. The government now requires its procurement officials to ‘explicitly evaluate social value and wellbeing in all contract bids’. (As will procurement officers on any overseas contract bids as per the WTO GPA).
THE NEW LAW WILL MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO BID FOR, AND WIN, NEW WORK. HERE’S HOW.
- Removal of bureaucratic barriers, levelling the business playing field for smaller businesses, so you can compete equally with larger organisations for contracts.
- Access to a full range of appropriate contracts for your business in one digital library, for example, a £20k print contract, up to a £5 million construction contract. Let us help you go get them.
- Guaranteed access to £1.3 trillion of overseas procurement opportunities for social value ready British business, thanks to the UK joining the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement on 1st January 2021.
- This is a 2-way street however, with overseas social value ready businesses having full access to bid for UK government public contracts with procurement officers legally bound to explicitly evaluate them!
- It will create a central digital platform for you to register and store your business details used for multiple bids, and ‘Commercial Frameworks’ will be more flexible.
- Prompt 60-day payment regime. Most smaller businesses fail due to cash flow.
- Removal of obstacles around the provision of accounts, and insurance, at the early bidding stage.
- Stronger exclusions framework with tougher action on underperforming suppliers.
- Transparency right through the commercial lifecycle of a contract, so you can access procurement data and see how the billions of government’s procurement money is spent.
- Guidance and support from procurers for the supplier community.
- Feedback on every failed bid, as procurers want you to keep trying.
IT’S TIME TO ACT – SO CONTACT US NOW FOR A FREE CONSULTATION AT
Let SVRE UK help your business to become Social Value Ready and benefit from these incredible growth opportunities as we move towards go-live in October. Stay ahead of the game, retain your existing clients, and access a UK procurement pot of £130 billion that the government has specifically set aside for SMEs, and access to £1.3 trillion in overseas procurement markets in the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Government Procurement. (1st January 2021).
