Corporate report

Coal Authority social value policy

Published 18 October 2024

1. Objectives

The Coal Authority’s mission, purpose and values clearly demonstrate our commitment to prioritising social, economic and environmental wellbeing.

We recognise that the way in which we manage our expenditure with suppliers and contractors can make a significant contribution to those priorities.

This policy sets out how we will harness our purchasing power, investment decisions and role as an employer to maximise the economic, social and environmental benefits to our activity, communities and businesses. This is known as social value.

Maximising social value goes through every area of work whether commissioning, procuring or delivering services or playing a supporting role.

While this policy is primarily about how we as a public body operate, we will work alongside our supply chain and partners to encourage others to embed social value in their operations, and to ensure our communities are able to access those benefits.

We aim to ensure our opportunities are inclusive and accessible.

2. Social value

Social value is the broad set of economic, social and environmental benefits that may be delivered in addition to the original goods or service being provided.

They may include jobs and training, support of local businesses and community organisations, and to our environment.

These benefits may be delivered through procurement, our employment practices or other processes.

2.1 Social Value Act and Social Value Model (PPN 06/20)

The Public Services (Social Value) Act requires all public sector organisations, and their suppliers, to look beyond the financial cost of a contract and consider how the services they commission and procure might improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of an area.

Procurement Policy Note 06/20 updated these requirements and mandates that all contracts in scope to explicitly evaluate and apply a 10% weighting criteria to social value and apply the principles of the Social Value Model.

The model articulates the 5 areas of priority focus for social value delivery in central government procurement, in the form of policy themes and outcomes.

These themes and outcomes link to central government priorities.

Commercial teams, in collaboration with the business, should select their individual objectives that are relevant and proportionate to their procurement from the Social Value Model.

The Social Value Model is laid out in full by the UK government in Procurement Policy Note 06/20, but at basic level it identifies 5 core priorities:

• COVID-19 recovery
• tackling economic inequality
• fighting climate change
• driving equal opportunity
• wellbeing

2.2 Greening Government Commitments

Social value will be integrated into our ways of procuring so we have a standard approach and targets will be embedded. 

We will apply as appropriate the Greening Government Commitments for procuring sustainable products and services, including the Green Book supplementary guidance on wellbeing, for example, where appropriate.

2.3 The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014

The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 outlines the sustainable procurement duty to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.

These requirements are not directly applicable to our organisation, however, as part of our ‘devolved nations’ principles, these will be considered for where our activities can help to support these duties.

2.4 Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015

In Wales, the term social value is in effect defined through the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015, which requires public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions, to work better with people, communities and each other, and to prevent persistent problems such as poverty, health inequalities and climate change.

These requirements are not directly applicable to our organisation, however, as part of our ‘devolved nations’ principles, we should be mindful of these requirements when undertaking procurements which will provide a benefit for the communities we serve.

3. Social value themes and alignment to our mission

From the 5 themes within the Social Value Model, we have selected 4 strategic themes, and relevant policy outcomes, to embed throughout our procurements to enable alignment with our strategic goals.

Those themes will be:

• tackling economic inequality
• fighting climate change
• driving equal opportunities
• wellbeing

The themes can be selected to support our efforts against wider organisational objectives within our procurements or selected to align issues relating to the nature of specific contracts.

For example, for construction contracts, we may want to select a relevant social value theme based on the environmental issues that may arise with constructing a mine water treatment scheme, such as: increased emission production.

Social value should be used to bolster our strategic efforts and is an ‘added’ value extra to the core requirements of the contract.

We will use the Social Value Model to support exploring these considerations with the business and potential suppliers to help identify our social value priorities and what we can achieve legally through the commercial lifecycle.

We will ensure that any benefit identified as social value in tenders or contracts under this policy is over and above the core deliverables of the tender or the contract, without placing unnecessary burden on our suppliers.

4. Where we will consider social value

Social value benefits are most commonly sought through our purchasing (procurement) processes.

We aim to embed social value in a much wider range of activities to optimise the benefits for our communities and the environment.

We will therefore consider social value in:

• our employment practices: as a key local employer through pay and conditions, enabling our staff to maximise their wellbeing, professional development, and to undertake volunteering and other activities which support our communities
• procurement of all goods, services and works contracts with a value requiring a formal tender process
• engagement with our wider customers and partners to achieve wider social value benefits within communities

Our aspiration is to become an exemplar organisation in our approach to social value, embedding social value through co-design in each stage of our processes and at the earliest opportunity, and exceeding the minimum requirements set out in legislation.

In this way, we will aim to lead social value, proactively sharing good practice case studies and resources to support partners in seeking social value to maximise their positive impact in the district, and especially where services are commissioned in partnership.

4.1 Tendering

We are mandated to use the model for all procurements for goods, works or services within Part 2 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 that are above the relevant threshold.

Our commercial sourcing strategies will include how we will embed social value into specific requirements, including social value objectives and delivery plans.

This includes 10% weighting within our tenders for social value, where in scope, including 1 or more social value questions.

For all our activities we will include basic social value guidance within our tender documents in the form of a statement.

Suppliers will be assessed on their commitment to social value within the technical ability questions, where it is related to the subject matter of the contract and complies with the general principles of equal treatment, non-discrimination and proportionality.

We need to clearly articulate and prescribe the social value ask for the project and share key information gathered at the design stage with bidders to:

• clearly indicate the scale of the ask
• prompt bidders to think more innovatively about finding solutions to deliver results needed to make a difference
• facilitate discussion between us and bidders to explore the links and opportunities between their approach to social value and our desired approach that focusses on meeting local needs in the area of the project
• identify opportunities for a collaborative approach to social value
• introduce selected bidders to community partners and stakeholders from the wider community who can help them achieve their social value aim (where possible or relevant), supporting the social value tendering process to become more robust and, as a consequence, the subsequent scoring and contract monitoring easier to facilitate and monitor
• support development of a mutually agreeable programme monitoring and feedback mechanism, where community partners are supporting suppliers to deliver social value, and feedback, monitoring and evaluation are designed with both qualitative and quantitative impact measurement in mind
• define appropriate social value delivery schedule for embedding into the contract and in discussion with selected bidders agree an alternative to social value provision (of equivalent impact and value) in the event that the agreed social value programme can’t be delivered
• a definition of what is relevant, appropriate and proportionate for the programme or project
• clearly identify the community where the social value is to be applied where possible.
• a clear link to the social value themes and highlight the specific added value and intended impact outcomes for the community in respect of the social value benefits (for example, by selecting the relevant bullet points from the sub criteria from the relevant social value theme from the Social Value Model)
• setting of consistent SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) commitments that align to clear metrics that can both be tailored to the individual contract and support consistence of approach and comparison across programmes measured across the contract and across programmes

The above should be developed and steered from the outcomes of the scoping and design stages for the project through the business case and the cost benefit assessment, which will help detail and provide information to the bidders on areas to focus towards.

Example statement

Theme 2 - economic inequality

Definition. Social value means asking the question – if we spend £1 on delivering a service, can that same £1 be used to also produce wider benefit to the community?  

So looking beyond the individual contract to collective benefit for the community (socially, environmentally or economically), examples might include offering apprenticeships, sourcing supplies and staff locally, offering training or support, how you encourage diversity in the workplace from people from vulnerable or disadvantaged backgrounds, support for community groups or charities, or improving local nature.

5. Building capacity

Unlocking the benefits of social value through our procurement and investment decisions and our role as an employer will require investment in our systems and capacity to champion and support social value at each stage of project development, commissioning and implementation.

We also need to strengthen the links to our suppliers to optimise the delivery of social value, improving coordination and removing duplication of activity. We have:

• appointed a social value champion to ensure consideration of social value in all procurement decisions
• upskilled all procurement staff on best practice methods for applying social value

We aim to:

• work with directorate leads to develop clear and practical guidance
• further develop central capability to support delivery of social value in key projects
• work with our supply chain to build capacity and knowledge around commitment to social value through delivery of our contracts

6. Measuring our impact

Improving the way we measure social value is essential to driving the step change in our approach and to realising the benefits for residents, voluntary and community organisations, businesses and the environment. We will:

• apply the Social Value Model, where suitable, supported by appropriate tools and systems
• report on social value committed and delivered within our corporate reporting framework and demonstrate those benefits accrued as result of those commitments
• use our social value achievement information to form case studies and ‘good news stories’ for our organisation and to help others
• engage with our supply chain to understand the impact of our social value application in tenders and contracts