Reappraising the UK social value legislation

Abstract

This article appraises the scope and legal obligations of the UK Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. The law, by imposing on public authorities an obligation to consider wider social, economic and environmental benefits before they enter into major public service contracts, in principle improves service outcomes for communities, and it also facilitates better access for third sector organisations to public contracting opportunities. But evidence of the legislation's impact has been mixed. It is, at this stage, promising in its ambition but with little prescriptive legal force in practice. The article suggests that community and third sector organisations should promote an experimentalist governance framework that imposes non-legal accountability on commissioning authorities for social value, by linking them into an iterative peer-review process.

Sustainable Public Procurement—External Forces and Accountability

“…In democracies citizens have delegated the provision of public services to public agencies which are controlled and governed by elected politicians. The interest of citizens is guarded and protected by a comprehensive system of accountabilities [2]. Accountability implies that an actor is held responsible for its actions and thus, is a process that involves an exchange of information between persons or organizations [42].…”

“…With respect to procurement in private organizations, public procurement is faced with specific additional requirements [22,31] as a result of a variety of stakeholders and their often conflicting and opposing interests [47,48]. Requirements such as accountability, responsiveness, and transparency, which refers to integrity and exemplary behavior [2]. These requirements influence internal procedures and processes, i.e., EU legislation, national governmental procurement laws, and governmental guidelines for sustainable procurement [36].…”

“…By adding 'societal forces' to the Public Procurement System [22] (p. 33), this study tries to incorporate recent developments into the arena of influential stakeholders. In the last decade, markets and governments were forced into increasing transparency [2]. Due to technological developments, e.g., big data, internet, social media, transparency is forced upon organizations [31].…”

“…In the last decades, ever more governments have set legislation to encourage public agencies in developing sustainable public procurement. The general idea is that public authorities are more likely to embrace sustainability in a light-touch system than in an imposing, prescriptive system [2]. Sustainable public procurement is moving towards a more strategic role [3] as it has to achieve specific governmental objectives [4].…”

Lessons from the Community Interest Company

“…From 2013, when the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 came into force (hereafter the 'Social Value Act'), public authorities have been under a legal obligation to consider economic, social and environmental well-being of the wider community, as opposed to purely commercial value for money, before procuring larger public service contracts with a value above the EU procurement thresholds (Boeger, 2017). 9 Their duties are soft -the Act does not impose an obligation to act upon these considerations -and they only extend to larger public service contracts but not to the procurement of works and goods or smaller service contracts.…”