Clare County Council has recently adopted a new measure to promote and facilitate social considerations in its public procurement procedures.
The Council has signed off on a new Employment, Supply Chain and Social Considerations Charter.
This charter was proposed by Cllr Ian Lynch as a measure to include social considerations, support for SMEs, and training, education and employment opportunities when awarding public contracts. The central idea behind the charter is that Clare County Council can consider allocating a percentage of the marks when evaluating a tender to measures that the contractor proposes in respect of the above social considerations.
The charter is in keeping with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform policy on ‘Promoting the use of Environmental and Social Considerations in Public Procurement’ which aims to promote and facilitate the incorporation of social considerations into public procurement procedures. The charter also reflects and is complementary to the themes in the new Clare Local Economic and Community Plan.
Pat Dowling, Chief Executive of Clare County Council, said, “We often see how large multinational companies give something back to the local community when they are awarded contracts. The idea here is to get staff thinking about leveraging the Council’s spend to deliver social benefits for the community and to get the companies competing for the contracts to think about how they can partner with a social enterprise on an initiative, or guarantee that their supply chains will be from SMEs or new businesses, for example.”
Peter Williams, Procurement Officer for Clare County Council, said, “This initiative allows staff who are drawing up tenders to include an award criterion for ‘Social Considerations’ if they wish; if they do so, the companies tendering for large contracts may now have to think not just about price and quality features in their tender, but also about what social benefit can they bring to the table if they win the contract. In this way we can leverage the spend on large contracts to have added social benefits.”
Cllr Ian Lynch, who brought forward the motion to the Council, said, “I’m delighted that my fellow Councillors endorsed the original motion for this charter and that it has been adopted by the Management Team of Clare County Council. The charter has the ability to add a new dimension to Council contracts where it is deemed suitable to include Social Considerations as an award criterion for a tender.”