Social value in procurement

The public services Social Value Act 2012 outlines the ways in which public services procurement can look at and capture the wider benefits a potential supplier might offer.
The benefits the Act covers include the following:

• Social and community
• Economic
• Environmental

Chris White, the MP behind the Act, explains social value succinctly with the following statement:

“We mean ‘value’ not in its narrow [financial] sense but in its true sense – recognising the importance of social, environmental and economic well-being across our communities and in our lives”

You look can find some useful information about the Social Value Act here.

What Excel's social value looks like

In terms of economic social value, we are working with local authorities and central Government to recover civil debts; money which is required to deliver services to the public and local businesses. With austerity measures, the recovery of these monies has become even more important.

With regards to social and community, we support our people through many development initiatives, including:

• We offer level 2 and level 3 qualifications and the award-winning training we offer is available externally to local government, central government, as well as to all our employees
• We make the best use of technology including apps and keeping printing and paper use to a minimum where possible
• We promote from within the business and train our employees to strive and achieve to their full potential
• None of our employees are on zero-hours contracts as we believe employees need regular income to support themselves. We believe that zero-hours contracts can be the reason why some debtors have trouble paying
• We have a mentoring program enabling more senior members of the team to pass on knowledge, insight and on the job experience
  

We also support the wider community:

• We take vulnerability seriously, with robust policies, as well as training all our customer-facing staff, not just enforcement agents, and providing support via our welfare team
• We actively support the Armed Forces Covenant and recruit many ex-forces personnel. We are an approved training provider to the Ministry of Defence’s Career Transition Partnership
• Our website and brochure are available in Welsh and we have Welsh speakers available at every stage of the recovery process
• We support charities through fundraising and events. We particularly look to support employees who have close relationships with charities that support ex-servicemen and women
  

What we have planned as our next steps

We’re currently scoping an environmentally friendly fleet of electric vehicles. Our enforcement agents spend a lot of time on the road and we want to further reduce the carbon footprint of the business.