The relevant National Outcomes and Indicators within the National Performance Framework focus our activity around ‘creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increased wellbeing, and sustainable and inclusive economic growth’. The relevant National Outcomes and Indicators for employment, skills and training include:
Economy: We have a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy
Education: We are well educated, skilled and can contribute to society
Fair Work and Business: We have thriving and innovative businesses, with quality jobs and fair work for everyone
Poverty: We tackle poverty by sharing opportunities, wealth and power more equally
Scotland was one of the first countries in the world to sign up to the Sustainable Development Goals which were developed by the UN to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. Many of the Goals align with Scotland’s National Performance Framework, and are relevant to employment, skills and training including:
4: Quality education
8: Decent work and economic growth
9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure
10: Reduced inequalities
NSET Published in March 2022, NSET is a 10-year strategy that aims to:
“Ensure that people have the skills they need at every stage of life to have rewarding careers and meet the demands of an ever-changing economy and society and that employers invest in the skilled employees they need to grow their businesses.” and
“Reorient our economy towards wellbeing and fair work, to deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth, to significantly reduce structural poverty, particularly child poverty, and improve health, cultural and social outcomes for disadvantaged families and communities.”
No One Left Behind is our approach to employability services in Scotland that tackles inequalities in Scotland’s labour market, that helps people of all ages who experience the most disadvantage and inequality to progress towards employment, to stay in employment and to progress in the workplace.
Through the partnership working agreement, Scottish and Local Government are committed to working in partnership to deliver employability support to achieve the best outcomes possible for participants.
Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs) play a critical role in the planning and commissioning of employability services locally providing support to help individuals overcome personal and systemic barriers to employment by addressing the broader needs of those who are disadvantaged in the labour market. This could be for example help with an addiction or specialist support for a mental health condition, etc.
Use of community benefits in procurement is intended to be complementary to the requirement to facilitate access to procurement to SMEs the third sector and supported businesses.* For lower value contracts, the increased accessibility for a diverse range of bidders (small, local businesses, social enterprises etc) may, in themselves, confer social impact.
To manage any possible burden on suppliers, and to avoid deterring SMEs, third sector and supported businesses’ participation in procurement, it is important to make sure that any use of community benefits in procurement is relevant and proportionate to the contract.
Fair Work First and Community Benefits in Procurement contribute to Community Wealth Building through:
The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 (The Act) aims to make the best use of public money, helping public bodies to achieve Scotland’s overarching purpose. The Act places a Duty on a public body that, before it buys anything, to consider how it can improve the economic, social and environmental well-being in Scotland through its procurements, with a particular focus on reducing inequality, and act in a way to secure this. Examples of this might include:
Appropriate use of the sustainability test to identify and implement good quality EST in relevant public contracts demonstrates compliance with several elements of the sustainable procurement duty, and to the strategic objectives of many public bodies.
Community benefits in procurement are defined by The Act as a contractual requirement imposed by a public body:
Section 25 of the Act states that:
The first ever Public Procurement Strategy for Scotland was published in April 2023 establishing a single vision for the whole Scottish public procurement community. The objectives are at the heart of the strategy and set out how public sector bodies in Scotland can align:
Good for Businesses and their Employees: Maximise the impact of procurement to boost a green, inclusive and wellbeing economy, promoting and enabling innovation in procurement.
Good for Places and Communities: Maximising the impact of procurement with strong community engagement and development to deliver social and economic outcomes to drive wellbeing by creating quality employment and skills.
Good for Society: Ensure that we are efficient, effective and forward thinking through continuous improvement to help achieve a fairer and more equal society.
Open and Connected: Ensure procurement in Scotland is open, transparent and connected at local, national and international levels.
The strategy which provides a high-level vision and roadmap which all public bodies can align to and deliver against, supports the First Minister’s four priorities: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency and improving public services.
Scottish Procurement Policy Note (SPPN 10/2020) Measuring social impact in public procurement explains social impact* as “the effects on people and communities that happen as a result of an action, activity, project, programme or policy.”.
Community benefit requirements and Fair Work First are key mechanisms for delivering social impact. Opportunities to achieve social impact in procurement should be considered early in the process (well in advance before the procurement process begins) and its success should be measured in terms of outcomes delivered. It is therefore important that the buyer considers the intended outcomes from a contract and optimum methods of delivering these so that progress can be monitored effectively over the duration of the contract to ensure delivery of commitments.
Buyers should ensure that the community benefits they ask for are relevant in their specific contract, and the community benefits offered by tenderers in response are what will be the most impactful for people and communities in the authority’s area without negatively affecting the current workforce. Voluntary or non-scored community benefits questions should be avoided.
Scottish public procurement policy is:
This approach allows individual public bodies, who are responsible for their procurement decisions, to use their judgement to identify and apply relevant community benefits to contracts in a proportionate manner.
This has resulted in wide use of social clauses in public procurement in Scotland, perhaps best demonstrated by the 2023 report Scotland's journey of achieving sustainable procurement outcomes 2002-2022. It has also encouraged public bodies to include socio-economic requirements via other routes including making social requirements a core part of the specification, breaking contracts into lots to make them more accessible to SMEs and the third sector and reserving contracts for supported businesses.
Fair Work First is the Scottish Government’s policy for driving high quality fair work, and workforce diversity across the labour market in Scotland. It focuses on the positive working practices that can be delivered through contracts and can be used as a vehicle to provide meaningful social impact beyond the workplace, in communities and the wider economy. The following Fair Work First criteria are particularly relevant to employment, skills and training:
It is important to promote and ensure compliance with Fair Work First in its entirety. For more information on Fair Work First see the Fair Work in Procurement guidance.
Statutory Guidance requires public bodies to consider how to address fair work practices in public contracts. A public body should consider, before undertaking a regulated procurement exercise, whether it is relevant and proportionate to include
The Act requires in-scope organisations to develop a procurement strategy and report against its delivery at the end of each year. This must set out how it intends to comply with the sustainable procurement duty, include a statement of the public body’s general policy on the use of community benefit requirements, on how it has consulted and engaged with those affected by its procurements, and payment of the real Living Wage to individuals involved in the delivery of a contract.
Annual procurement reports must include a summary of any community benefit requirements imposed as part of a regulated procurement that were fulfilled in the year covered by the report.
Use sub-contracting through PCS in major procurements is another form of community benefit. Sub-contracting is unlikely to be suitable for contacts below the community benefits threshold and consequently reporting on this is not expected.
