Decision-makers should explore how procurement processes can be weighted to ensure EOBs are advantaged proportionately to the significant impact they make on economic prosperity and wellbeing for all.
This may be accomplished by reviewing relevant legislation – such as exploring ways to expand the mandate of the 2012 Social Value Act to not just consider social value, but evaluate it within contract awards, as well as publishing evidence of social value delivered.
Government should also invest in systems, language, and guidance required to deliver on this. It will be important, for example, to work with relevant stakeholders (such as Social Value Portal, the LGA Social Value Task Force, etc.) to further develop statutory and non-statutory guidance around procuring goods and services and relevant frameworks, such as the national TOMs which public bodies use as a baseline for measuring social value.
Going beyond social value, we believe that employee owned businesses, based on their increased productivity and rates of investment into improving their own goods and services, are well placed to deliver the best value-for-money public goods and services.
We see this often our member case studies and, in the future, we'll be seeking to build a robust evidence base to inform how government can use ownership as an indicator of quality of outcomes from procuring goods and services.