Our partnership

We know that typically 80% of a Local Authorities carbon footprint comes from the supplies, services, and works it purchases.

All of our partners have declared a climate emergency and put in place strategies and plans to become carbon neutral by 2030.

We aim to support this by:

• Understanding the carbon footprint of the Council’s purchased goods, services and works to ensure our carbon reduction activity is targeted where it can have the biggest impact.
• Working with our elected members, staff, partners, and contractors to ensure that carbon reduction is fully embedded in our decision-making processes throughout the procurement cycle and low carbon solutions are implemented where appropriate.
• Collaborating with, and learning from organisations across the public, private and third sector to encourage and accelerate the transition to low carbon solutions.

Our partners recognise the economic, social, environmental, and cultural value that can be generated by spending money with local businesses, in particular small, micro and individuals and the third sector including voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE).

We aim to support this by:

• Increasing the availability and visibility of opportunities for small businesses and the third sector to supply the Council.
• Making it easier for small businesses and the third sector to do business with us by standardising and simplifying our requirements, processes, and systems.
• Working with partners to develop the capability and capacity of small businesses and the third sector to secure public sector contracts.

All of our partners have signed up to the Code of Practice Ethical Employment in Supply Chains which seeks to tackle modern slavery, human rights abuses, blacklisting, false self-employment, unfair use of umbrella schemes and zero hours contracts.

The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act creates a framework to enhance the well-being of the people of Wales by improving public services through social partnership working, promoting fair work and socially responsible public procurement.

In addition, safeguarding vulnerable people is key priorities across all of our partners and we need to ensure our suppliers and contractors understand and accept that safeguarding children and adults at risk from harm is everybody’s responsibility.

We aim to support this by:

• Ensuring that tenderers and contractors are aware of our commitment to working with organisations that will support us to meet equality, fair work and safeguarding duties.
• Using our tendering process to ensure that our suppliers and contractors are committed to supporting us to deliver our equality, fair work and safeguarding duties.
• Working with our suppliers and contractors to ensure that they promote fair work practices and safeguarding within their organisation and supply chain.

Community Benefits and Social Value are additional commitments made by tenderers during the tender process to deliver economic, social, environmental, and cultural value throughout the delivery of Council contracts. They typically focus on:

• Training and recruitment of economically inactive people
• Supply chain initiatives and Working with the 3rd Sector
• Educational initiatives
• Community and Cultural initiatives
• Environmental initiatives

Our partners recognise the opportunities they provide to tackle the inequality and poverty gap and provide much needed support to our communities and individuals.

We aim to support this by:

• Adopting a consistent approach to securing and managing delivery of community benefits and social value commitments which is understood by our partners and their suppliers and contractors
• Co-ordinating the community benefits and social value approach by working with Council services, our communities, partners and contractors to inform our priorities and facilitate their delivery
• Reporting on achievements, learning from failures, and promoting success

Our partners have a combined annual procurement spend of over £1 billion. It is therefore important that they can demonstrate value for money through all stages of the procurement lifecycle.

Importantly our partners recognise that value for money needs to consider quality and whole life cost in respect of financial and wider environmental, social, economic, and cultural considerations, in particular carbon reduction and community benefits.

We aim to support this by:

• Improving visibility and awareness of where and how money is being spent.

• Embedding value for money and whole life cost considerations into the procurement lifecycle.

• Helping to improve the consistency and application of contract management.

Public procurement in Wales is subject to both UK and Welsh legislation. In addition, our partner’s will have their own constitutional governance arrangements, in particular Contract Standing Orders and Procurement Rules.

The legislative landscape is undergoing significant change with the new UK Procurement Bill and the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales). The challenges and opportunities this presents will require us to improve our practice, processes, and systems.

We aim to support this by:

• Regularly reviewing and updating procurement documentation, processes, systems, and controls to ensure they reflect legislative changes, and, where practically possible, align across our partners.
• Providing education and training to Council officers involved in the procurement process.
• Ensuring we have adequate arrangements in place to manage performance and providing oversight and assurance to the Council’s leadership teams

Our partners recognise that many of the challenges we face will not be addressed by maintaining the status quo and there is a need to challenge ourselves and our markets to deliver new products and ways of working which can help us to:

• Reduce carbon.
• Increase Community Benefits and Social Value delivery.
• Deliver better outcomes.
• Maintain or reduce cost to support the budget position.
• Improve services.

This means we need to plan better, challenge what we have always done, engage markets early, seek good practice from across the public, third and private sector and use the procurement process as means to drive the market to offer solutions which address specific problems, challenges, and outcomes.

We aim to support this by:

• Challenging existing procurement arrangements and delivery models and seeking relevant examples of market innovations and best practice.
• Encouraging outcome / problem-based procurement approach to stimulate creative and innovative solutions and engaging early with markets.
• Collaborating with Welsh Government, the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), Cardiff Capital Region and other public sector organisations to drive innovation and greater value and share good practice and develop insight.