It’s some fourteen years since the Public Sector (Social Value) Act came into being and since then Governments have continued to evolve its use in procurement to enhance the delivery of social value to communities.
During the proceeding years the Waste Industry has genuinely tried to embrace the concept of social value, initially to meet the needs of a procurement process, however the concept is now becoming more widely more embedded as part of corporate culture.
It is really positive to see that those procuring larger public style contracts begin to see the opportunity to move from buying just the lowest price to buying the outcome which will benefit their communities as a whole.
So how can social value evolve from this perhaps still more corporate approach to something that embeds itself into the heart of a community. The next stage of development needs to be a more locally driven “place” based approach where social, environmental and economic needs are addressed in closer collaboration with local stakeholders, so they genuinely target their key needs.
By creating a more holistic approach that covers the social, economic and physical wellbeing of a community through the lens and knowledge of local people will undoubtedly embed a more meaningful change over the long run.
By empowering local communities to identify what outcomes would bring the most tangible and long-term social, environmental and economic impacts and capturing their delivery through a set of measurable indicators will only lead to a longer lasting and beneficial partnership between companies and the communities they serve.
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