Revised Best Value Statutory Guidance Consultation Paper (for England)
Consultation response from Locality – 20th March 2015
About Locality
Locality is the national network of ambitious and enterprising community-led
organisations, working together to help neighbourhoods thrive. We help people to set up
locally owned and led organisations. We support existing organisations to work
effectively through peer-to-peer exchange of knowledge and best practice on
community asset ownership, community enterprise, collaboration, commissioning
support, social action, community voice, community rights and regeneration.
For further information on this submission please contact:
Louise Winterburn
Policy and Research Manager
Locality
33, Corsham Street
London
N1 6DR
Tel: 07515 062 846
Email: [email protected]
Locality’s response
The consultation paper invites comments on whether the updated and additional
paragraphs in the Secretary of State’s draft revised guidance are:
a. clear;
b. specific;
c. proportionate; and
d. Is there further detail that would help best value authorities know what processes
would help them to decide whether organisations are extreme before making funding
decisions?
We have commented on the updated paragraph 2 and paragraph 4.
Paragraph 2
“Authorities have a statutory duty to consider social value for services above the
Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) threshold at the pre-procurement stage.
Authorities can of course apply the concept of social value to all their procurements,
and this Guidance recommends that social value is considered wherever relevant.”
We welcome this new version in the guidance in clearly stating that Authorities can
utilise social value in all their procurement. It is clear and specific.
In light of the growing evidence of the effectiveness in commissioning for social value in
also ensuring Best Value is achieved, this paragraph should be further strengthened to
state that social value should always be considered by Authorities in relation to all
procurement not just above the threshold.
We would also recommend in light of the importance of this paragraph and the recent
evidence from The Young Review, which highlighted the urgent need to improve
awareness and consistent application of social value, to be proportionate, the guidance
needs to be further expanded.
We would recommend that the guidance needs to;
Provide additional references to other sources of information for example the
Social Value Hub, Lord Young’s review of the Social Value Act, and remind
procurement officers of the importance of attending the Government’s
Commissioning Academy.
Explain that The Young Review highlighted examples of best practice which
utilised social value beyond the scope of the Act and this clearly demonstrated
Best Value.
Reference the growing body of evidence that procurement which is devolved to
the most local level appropriate, and designed around the needs of service users
can both increase Best Value and improve public service delivery. (See “Saving
money by doing the right thing: Why local by default should replace diseconomies
of scale”).
Paragraph 4
“Authorities should avoid gold-plating the Equality Act 2010 and should not impose
contractual requirements on private and voluntary sector contractors, over and above
the obligations in that Act. Local authorities should seek to minimise unnecessary
paperwork and obstacles to contract compliance, thereby making it easier for small and
medium firms and the voluntary sector to apply and bid for contracts, and lowering
costs to taxpayers”
This paragraph is not clear, specific or proportionate.
In particular the use of the term “gold-plating” is a vague and unhelpful term. Locality
has received no evidence from members that the Equalities Act adds an additional layer
of bureaucracy or is a barrier to organisations bidding for contracts and would refute the
assertion in this paragraph that this is the case.
Crucially, we believe that if the government wishes to realise its ambitions to reduce
barriers and encourage greater collaboration with community-led organisations, this part
of the guidance needs to focus on the barriers that have been identified and well
documented by the voluntary and community sector.
Locality’s own research shows that barriers are
Contract size being too large (53.1% of respondents)
Red tape/bureaucracy (43.8% however, this refers to wider bureaucracy and
there is no evidence that the Equality Act represents a significant barrier to
organisations bidding for contracts)
Excessive risk in contract terms and geographical coverage of contract not
matching organisation’s own coverage (35.4%)
As the biggest barrier to the voluntary and community sector is the scale of
procurement, the guidance should include information about the need to disaggregation
into smaller contract sizes in order to enable organisations to bid for contracts.
We welcome the proposals to reduction the bureaucracy being passed down
unnecessarily to community-led organisations, however, we would prefer that this was
expressed as a positive duty i.e. that Authorities should ensure that only necessary
paperwork and processes should form part of contract requirements. In order to identify
what is “necessary” we would encourage Authorities to work collaborative with service
users and service providers at the most appropriate local level for the service delivery.
We would recommend alongside work to develop statutory guidance the Department for
Communities and Local Government carry out a targeted marketing campaign aimed at
commissioners to raise awareness of the barriers to the voluntary and sector engaging
and the additional value that the sector brings.