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Work co-operatively to ensure that there is not significant regulatory divergence across authorities, especially where there are clear economic ties between authorities.

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* Local Businesses
* Social value orgs
* Reserved contracts

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The analysis was conducted by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies for Manchester City Council as part of a 10 year partnership. It demonstrates the wider contribution that procurement can make to a local economy and how it can support the achievement of wider social and environmental outcomes.

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The analysis was conducted by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies for Manchester City Council as part of a 10 year partnership. It demonstrates the wider contribution that procurement can make to a local economy and how it can support the achievement of wider social and environmental outcomes.

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Can include meet the buyer events

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Procure in small lots to allow small, local companies to bid and build up experiences

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* Check existing processes to check they are consortia friendly
* Make sure enough time is built into the process to ensure local, small businesses have time to organise
* Review tender criteria so that it doesn't exclude consortia

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Support smaller, local SMEs to develop consortia to bid for large contracts

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Support smaller, local SMEs to develop consortia to bid for large contracts

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Social enterprise in N Wales helping to move disadvantaged people back into the labour market. Have only been consulted once by their local authority. Would welcome more meaningful engagement with LA.

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Involve local businesses in developing local economic action plans. Build on their knowledge and skills

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Social responsible procurement strategy

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Item 5 App 1 Socially Responsible Procurement Policy.pdf

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Manchester - sustainable procurement policy

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Manchester - sustainable procurement policy

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Looming over one of the poorest parts of Plymouth, which is to say one of the poorest parts of Britain, is a giant graveyard. Its buried are not men and women, but the carcasses of 13 nuclear submarines. Some have been dead for decades, such as the HMS Conqueror, which sank the Belgrano 36 years ago. Nine still have nuclear fuel rods, and there have been repeated leaks of radioactive waste. The Ministry of Defence claims all are safe. Then again, it sometimes doesn't even disclose breaches until months later, when MPs and journalists have had to winch out the truth.

And so the neighbours worry. Some mention the children they send to the primary school next door. Yet the boats are unlikely to be dismantled or moved any time soon. Britain lavishes official attention on the well-off, whether in David Cameron's old seat of Witney or in Theresa May's Maidenhead. But down by the docks in the ward of Devonport, over 40% of children grow up in poverty - a depth of disadvantage that arouses from Whitehall little more than a shrug.

All this runs true to local history. For nigh-on five decades, Devonport had its own Berlin Wall, with 50 acres of land walled up by the military. Complete with barbed wire running around the top, it was loathed by locals. It was only toppled in 2007. "The navy, the army, the air force: they come in, they do what they want, and take away the bits of the city they want for themselves," says councillor Chris Penberthy, who grew up near the dockyard.

"People do things to Plymouth," he says. "Plymouth hasn't often been allowed to do things for itself." He is referring to the blitz, followed by the imposition of an Abercrombie city plan and the throwing up of shoddy housing. He also means the way in which well-meaning policy experts will today pitch up with some cash and pilot their brainwaves in Devonport and the impoverished west of the city. They come with a grand scheme to deal with household budgeting or child malnutrition and stay for a few months until the money runs out. Then they hurry off. A 60s baby, Penberthy grew up to the smell of Farley's Rusks baking nearby. It joined Clarks' shoes on a long rollcall of big local businesses. This is the Plymouth that residents liken to a northern mill town or a Welsh mining village. Just like them, the industry left decades ago. Just like them, it voted for Brexit.

Representing the ward next door to Devonport, Penberthy sees ingrained deprivation in one of the richest countries in human history. Primary schools hold "brushing clubs" to help children look after their teeth, and "for some of those kids, aged eight or nine, it'll be the first time they use a toothbrush". Ahead of next month's local elections, women on doorsteps say, "I vote how my husband tells me." Families ripped off by the benefits office and bilked of desperately-needed cash for their disabled children sigh, "They must be right - they are the government."

What lends this even greater piquancy is Plymouth's naval history, still celebrated in the breakfast rooms of a hundred lodging houses, with their paintings of Francis Drake on a bowling green. Before the dockyard became a radioactive burial ground, it employed tens of thousands of men. Today that figure is about 2,500.

Post-industrial, post-imperial, post-Suez, Plymouth is no ordinary city; it is a place where the furs in which Britain wraps itself are revealed as so many rags. Which makes what it does instead important not just locally but nationally. What it is doing is one of the most intriguing experiments I have seen in any British city. However far from perfect, it shows what can happen when a council tries to shape how business behaves in its backyard. It is what a city doing things for itself looks like. And it starts neither in the council chamber nor the city centre, but in a knackered hall in Devonport. Dotted across Devonport are the grand Regency buildings that remind visitors of its vast previous wealth and pre-1914 status as an independent town. Most imposing of all is the Guildhall, with its massive Doric pillars. By the mid-2000s, it had lain empty for years, being far too large for the now-shrunken local economy. Then, to councillors' relief, along came a regional group called the Real Ideas Organisation (Rio).

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Moments Cafe Photograph: SWNS.com/James Dadzitis

"The conversation began, 'Do you think it needs to be a community centre, a business centre or an arts centre?'" recalls Rio chief executive Lyndsey Hall. "By the end, it was, 'We don't care what you do - just take it away.'" With a £1.75m grant, Hall did just that. Today, it's not just a centre for community or business or arts: it's all three - and more. "No one's going to get rich out of running a building like this," says Hall's colleague Ed Whitelaw. "Why would any private company want to take it on?"

But Hall and Whitelaw don't run a standard business. Theirs is a social enterprise, a company that uses its profits and assets for public good. Rio derives an income from the Guildhall, but it doesn't sweat the building for every last penny.

To wander around the Guildhall is to see that ethos in action: the main hall with its stained-glass windows has just been vacated by a team of cheerleaders, and is let out for free to community groups. Other social enterprises rent office space and use the basement jail cells as meeting rooms. In the corner is a cafe and bakery.

When the council met Rio in the late 2000s, social enterprises were still a novelty. Hall had been inspired by a visit to Toronto and seeing everything from supermarket chains to the giant Harbourfront arts centre operating as community businesses. But in the UK, social enterprises, or community interest companies, were only legally recognised in 2005. A product of fag-end Blairism, they came bearing that ideology's virtues and vices: a desire to tackle age-old social problems in new ways and a bewildered wonderment at the magic that could somehow be worked by entrepreneurs. That haze hangs over the 2005 act, which establishes a watchdog for the new businesses - but says its "power should be exercised only to the extent necessary to maintain confidence in community interest companies". As for how exactly communities were to be served by these companies - well, that was usually left for the companies themselves to define. Whether returning £10m or 10p to society - that's up to them. "Some social enterprises we go, 'brilliant, fabulous'," says Rio's Hall. "Other things named as social enterprises we go, 'ugh'."

Yet consider the possibilities that a new form of entrepreneurship offers Plymouth, which faces the same huge challenge as numberless towns and cities across Britain and the west: how to get capital and power to stay local. One answer adopted by Chris Penberthy and the other Labour politicians voted in to lead the council in 2012 was to grow a different kind of business. The next year, Plymouth raced Bristol to become the first social enterprise city in the UK.

"How do we grow our economy and grow ourselves a future? By finding companies who will do more than corporate social responsibility," says Penberthy, who was put in charge of growing social enterprise in the city, a post then unknown to local government.

Plymouth now has more than 150 social enterprises employing over 7,000 workers earning a combined income of over £500m

"There was a lot of banging desks and 'Do it now!'" recalls Alistair Macpherson, who worked at the council for years. In another municipal rarity, Penberthy set up a public fund to kickstart new social enterprises. More than largesse or political vision, this was a way for a local authority with dwindling budgets to fill in the gaps that big business wouldn't touch.

Those gaps are not just the dead buildings brought back to life by Rio, which is now at work on a £7m project to turn Devonport's abandoned market hall into a high-tech centre for virtual reality. They're also the solar farm that Macpherson built as head of Plymouth Energy Community on contaminated land next door to a bomb dump. And they're in the city centre's abandoned shops, such as the one now occupied by Moments Cafe which, as well as selling mugs of tea and ham omelettes, helps dementia sufferers and their carers. Run by nurse Kate Smith, the cafe's staff has been trained to look out for memory problems or distress among customers.

What drew Luke into the cafe was a sign reading "Memory Matters". It was like a personal message. Last July, surgeons had removed a brain tumour by cutting out part of a lobe, and now he could no longer remember basic things, whether afternoon plans or people's names. At the till he didn't ask for a coffee: "I just wanted a number. A number for me to ring to speak about my memory."

Instead, Kate took him upstairs for a quiet chat - then it all came out. How the tumour meant he'd lost his building business and split from the mother of his four-year-old girl. How his head still hurt so much, despite all the heavy-duty meds. The attempts to kill himself. How the council had stuck him in a house-share with two other men, both threatening to beat him up. How he'd run away, with nowhere else to go. "I just bawled my eyes out," says Luke, and not because of how much trouble he was in. "It was the acceptance from Kate. She listened and understood."

Which made her rare. As Smith says, "The hospital hadn't lined up any support. The [council] housing officers didn't twig how badly his memory had been affected." A sick man with no money and little support had been left to fend for himself. By the time he came into the cafe, he was bedding down on the streets. This was "just before the big snow" a few weeks ago that killed rough sleepers across the country.

"You can't leave him," Smith remembers thinking to herself. "He'll die." So she lobbied council officers, drafted in support from Luke's doctors, and got him a diary. Flip it open and the pages teem with Smith's neatly written reminders to visit the hospital, phone the bank. It was a week's work, reckons Smith. "And the rest," laughs Luke. It paid off: he is now in a Travelodge while the council sorts out a permanent home. An amazing story, but it leaves you wondering why a just-opened cafe is picking up the pieces dropped by the NHS and the council - and whether tears over coffee and long hours ringing around a civic centre can ever form an actual business model. At the same time, it's impossible to imagine such stories coming out of the mammoth Costa just a few doors down.

Plymouth now has more than 150 social enterprises employing over 7,000 workers earning a combined income of over £500m. For a city of 250,000 people, which only adopted social enterprise five years ago, that's remarkable growth. Even more surprising is the politics. Political control over Plymouth council changes only slightly less frequently than the tide, yet the Tory administration that took over in 2016 has also encouraged and funded social enterprise. If, as looks likely, Labour returns to power next month, it is committed to doubling the city's co-operative economy by 2025. With neither side threatening to pull the plug, national charities such as Esmee Fairbairn and Power To Change have the security they need to plough millions into the city's sector.

To see what social enterprise could look like, walk 10 minutes west from Moments Cafe to yet another local graveyard. Once heaving with pubs and clubs, Union Street is now silent and shut. Yet inside The Clipper, once open all hours, Hannah Sloggett and Wendy Hart have plans to open a covered market and turn the two flats above into affordable homes for single fathers who lack the bedrooms for their visiting kids.

That idea came from local residents, just as most of the pair's politics is rooted in local activism. They live minutes away, and as Nudge Community Builders want nine out of every 10 jobs associated with their projects to go to local people and 70% of the money they spend to stay within a mile of the street. Like many others I meet in the city, they mention the Preston model - only the Plymouth equivalent is much more rooted in the private sector. Looking at Hart's platform trainers and hearing Sloggett happily describe herself as "giggly" tells you a lot about the self-confidence of a sector that's only been around for a few years, but that is starting to see itself as a direct challenge to the rest of business.

I'm reminded of a remark from Rio's Hall. "There was that moment on television when you'd have Alan Sugar doing The Apprentice and getting people to behave as badly as possible. Then an hour afterwards, it'd be The Secret Millionaire - with all these tycoons making people cry by giving them money out of the goodness of their hearts. "And that's - that's just wrong!" Her head crashes into her palms. "Why are we creating a culture where it's OK to make money behaving as badly as possible in order for people to give it away? That's the culture we've got to change. I don't care whether it's called social enterprise, or anything else."

Aditya Chakrabortty is senior economics commentator for the Guardian

Additional reporting by Tom Wright Topics

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Post-industrial Plymouth was broke. So it took business into its own hands | Aditya Chakrabortty

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Looming over one of the poorest parts of Plymouth, which is to say one of the poorest parts of Britain, is a giant graveyard. Its buried are not men and women, but the carcasses of 13 nuclear submarines. Some have been dead for decades, such as the HMS Conqueror, which sank the Belgrano 36 years ago.

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Encouraging anchor institutions to spend locally

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Encouraging anchor institutions to spend locally

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To achieve outcome focused and service user oriented services

Source: NEF and CLES

Case studies:
Kent and Oldham

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What is it?

With the devolution process in England focused on combined services and a general consensus that integrated public services are better for the public and for the balance sheet, there is currently a strong push towards integrated public services that offer opportunities for local organisations to work together and pool budgets with a view to increasing their impact. This approach can help break down organisational siloes, and encourage more outcome-focused and service user-orientated services.

Who's doing it?

Oldham: Pooling expertise and budgets to combat fuel poverty
In order to tackle fuel poverty and deliver savings in health and social care, the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), public health, and local housing associations in Oldham pooled a budget to fund a Warm Homes programme, investing £1.1m between 2012 and 2015. The programme increased energy efficiency and provided advice about fuel providers and debt. Apart from the initial £200,000 investment made by the partner agencies, most of the subsequent finance has been generated through Energy Company Obligation grants - money that is provided through a statutory duty for utility companies to provide energy efficiency reforms for those living in eligible areas, or residents on eligible benefits. As the main beneficiary of savings, the CCG pays a greater proportion than other partners for every person bought out of fuel poverty. The scheme is a good example of how collaboration and budget pooling can serve to encourage holistic approaches that are more effective in delivering broad outcomes, such as increased health and wellbeing, which cut across service silos.

Kent: Bringing arts and culture into health and wellbeing services
In Kent the local CCG and county council collaboratively reviewed their commissioning frameworks to engage arts and culture organisations in health and wellbeing services. This covered a range of services including a community-based mental health initiative worth £4m, early help and preventative services worth £8m and, most substantially, Kent's £50m waste management service. In the latter, the arts and cultural sector were engaged along with traditional providers to offer ideas relating to increasing public understanding of waste's environmental impact and generating community action. By mid-2016 the New Economic Foundation (NEF) reported a steep increase in the number of arts and cultural organisations engaged by the programme. Other local authorities should keep an eye on the progress of the cultural commissioning programme for any learning relating to the role that local arts and culture organisations can play in service delivery.

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Pool budgets and commission jointly - Creating Good Economies

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What is it? With the devolution process in England focused on combined services and a general consensus that integrated public services are better for the public and for the balance sheet, there is currently a strong push towards integrated public services that offer opportunities for local organisations to work together and pool budgets with a view to increasing their impact.

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Community and Indycube pledge to give power to the self-employed

Community - 1st June 2017

The trade union, Community, and Indycube, a co-working social enterprise which provides low cost desk space to self-employed workers, have launched a new partnership to provide services, representation, and a collective voice, for all self-employed workers across the UK.

In hundreds of years of trade union history, the new partnership is the first of its kind, and will offer bespoke services to all 5 million of the UK's self-employed workers. The partnership is the product of months of work by Indycube and Community during which time it became clear that despite millions of self-employed people needing help and support at work, trade unions were simply not equipped to meet their needs.

The new platform, branded as 'Indycube Community', offers all the best parts of Community's traditional trade union support such as expert legal advice and representation, but with additional specialist support on matters such as contract disputes, copyright law, intellectual property, and shareholder agreements, as well as many other areas relevant to self-employed workers. Indycube Community will also offer business advice for starts up and freelancers, covering everything from invoicing and tax returns, to insurance and health & safety.

One major benefit which Indycube Community will deliver for self-employed workers is a comprehensive invoice factoring service, to end the scourge of late payments and cash flow crises. Late payments currently leave UK small businesses and freelancers £26 billion out of pocket. Invoice factoring services are normally only available to large, well established companies, but using the collective strength of their members, Indycube Community will give independent workers the security of always being paid on time.

Members of Indycube Community will also have access to Indycube's existing network of 30 co-working sites, which provide low cost desk space as well as facilities such as creative studios and workshops. While most of Indycube's existing sites are in Wales, additional sites will open across the whole of the UK in the coming year.

John Park, Assistant General Secretary of Community, said:

"This partnership between Community and Indycube will support self-employed workers like never before. We are taking the best bits of traditional trade unionism and making them relevant to modern, independent workers, and delivering them through an innovative online platform.

"Millions of people in the UK survive in precarious self-employment; Indycube Community has the potential to give real power and control to those workers, just as Community has done in traditional industries for centuries. We are proud of our heritage, but we know that to stay relevant we must meet the challenges of the modern world of work."

Mark Hooper, founder and co-director of Indycube, said:

"For several years, Indycube has supported independent workers by providing low cost spaces to work, collaborate and socialise. Our partnership with Community is the next step in our journey and will give self-employed workers a collective voice and access to support and services that would normally be out of their reach.

"Whether someone is self-employed, a freelancer, or working in the gig economy, Indycube Community will help make their working world better. No one has tried this before, and we are really excited about working to give support, representation and guidance to the millions of people in Britain who work independently."
Click here to find out more and to join Indycube Community. Notes

1. Indycube is a social enterprise providing co-working spaces, supporting freelancers and micro businesses. Having started in Wales, Indycube now operate across the UK connecting people and places.

2. Community is a modern trade union with over a hundred years' experience standing up for working people. With roots in traditional industries, Community now represents workers across the UK in various sectors.

3. For more information, contact Callum Munro on cmunro@community-tu.org / 07821250904.

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Community and Indycube pledge to give power to the self-employed | Community

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Community - 1st June 2017 The trade union, Community, and Indycube, a co-working social enterprise which provides low cost desk space to self-employed workers, have launched a new partnership to provide services, representation, and a collective voice, for all self-employed workers across the UK.

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Co-op and trade union solutions to precarious work

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Co-op and trade union solutions to precarious work

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Zero hours contract, Uber/Deliveroo models

Source: Co-ops UK/Co-op College

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Britain's growing sector of 'precarious' workers need the protection of co-operatives says new report | Co-operatives UK Newsroom

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Britain is failing its growing army of self-employed workers according to a

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Project by Resolution Foundation, TechforGood and Bethnal Green Ventures: Future of Fair Work Challenge.

Exploring ideas that support workers and improve their chances of getting a fair deal at work.

Here are some of the opportunities we’ve identified:

Better ways of organising workers, strengthening their bargaining power and ensuring their legal rights are respected.

New worker-friendly agency models that ensure ‘flexible work’ isn’t just about benefiting employers.

Easier ways for workers to acquire new skills, access training and learn about better job opportunities.

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Future of Fair Work Challenge: In search of new tech-led ideas that address inequality in the world of work

On February 23rd-25th Resolution Trust, techforgood.global and Bethnal Green Ventures are joining forces to bring you the Future of Fair Work Challenge - an intensive weekend support programme to help people develop and test new ideas for using technology to radically improve the future of work.

Why are we doing this?

On the surface, the UK labour market appears healthy - employment is near a record high. But, look a bit deeper and it's clear that there are large and long-standing issues that need to be tackled. Low-pay is higher in the UK than in many other countries, with 6 million people earning less than the living wage. Insecurity at work has increased, with more people working as agency workers or on zero-hours contracts. And routes into higher wage jobs are limited, with just 1 in 6 of the low-paid in the mid-2000s moving onto into higher paid work over the past decade.

And as the world of work continues to change we can be sure that new challenges will emerge. Fears about robots and AI putting an end to all work as we know it are overstated, but it's undoubtedly the case that technology will continue to change the way we work. Further upheaval in the types of jobs we do, and the sort of security they offer is inevitable. It's a sure bet that employers will continue to use technology to shift risk onto workers.

There aren't - yet - many people thinking about how technology can be used to push back against these trends. But there should be - technology could be used to fix problems across our jobs market and to improve the position of insecure workers. For example, tech could be used to disrupt the employment agency industry with the gains diverted to workers' pockets or to help workers find new ways to organise.
The opportunities for tech-led, pro-worker innovation are many but there are just too few people pursuing this agenda. That's what we want to change.
Over one weekend, the Future of Fair Work Challenge will help people to rapidly test and prototype ideas and think about how to turn them into world changing products and services beyond the event. We're looking for any tech idea that supports workers and improves their chances of getting a fair deal at work.

Here are some of the opportunities we've identified:

Better ways of organising workers, strengthening their bargaining power and ensuring their legal rights are respected.

New worker-friendly agency models that ensure 'flexible work' isn't just about benefiting employers.

Easier ways for workers to acquire new skills, access training and learn about better job opportunities.

Get involved

We're looking for people who have a great idea for using technology to improve the future of work and would benefit from a weekend of intensive support to help test and develop it. If you've already got a team then you should bring them along.

We're also looking for volunteers with the skills and experience to help teams - from user design, prototyping, coding, product development and data science to marketing, communications and business development - a wide range of experience and backgrounds are welcome.

More information about the Challenge and how to apply can be found on the event website.

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content:Tech for Good , website: M/A ma-work.co.uk

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On February 23rd-25th Resolution Trust, techforgood.global and Bethnal Green Ventures are joining forces to bring you the Future of Fair Work Challenge - an intensive weekend support programme to help people develop and test new ideas for using technology to radically improve the future of work.

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How can procurement support social, environmental and economic well being?

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ceri_anne_fidler
1m

Social Value Champions
Cardiff and Vale has Social Value Champions.  Could similar Champions for Future Gens be developed?
Source: Cardiff and Vale UHB

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Birmingham City Council requires contractors including grant recipients to sign up to the Charter (subject to contract thresholds, see the full case study paper). Any organisation can sign up to the Charter voluntarily. All Contractors, subcontractors and grant recipients are required to adhere to the Birmingham Living Wage Policy regardless of contract/grant value. Charter signatories are required to complete an action plan template specifying how they can improve the economic, social, and environmental wellbeing of the locality. This includes indirect outcomes via the supply chain. For compulsory signatories the action plan must be submitted as part of the tender return.

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Model tender document/ITT that can be used across public bodies to facilitate procurement that embeds social and environmental value alongside cost (e.g. clauses on local employment, small lots to build capacity, reserved contracts
Source: Cardiff and Vale UHB