Equal - Digital Repository

Background

BEST Procurement is a major initiative led by Social Enterprise East Midlands (SEEM), bringing together a partnership of agencies from the public sector, social enterprise support organisations and experts, and social enterprises themselves. SEEM is the regional voice for social enterprise. Its aim is to create an environment where social enterprises are encouraged to develop and enabled to grow. 

The Public Sector is one of the largest purchasers of goods and services in the UK and is the main customer for many of the services that social enterprises offer today. With a focus on best value for money spent, public sector agencies increasingly are required to achieve additional social, environmental and community benefits through their procurement function. This represents a unique opportunity for social enterprises, with their social, environmental and community focus, to increase their role as suppliers to the public sector.

Aims

BEST Procurement aims to improve the correlation between public sector expenditure and public benefit, positioning social enterprise as a key delivery vehicle in achieving this goal. It focuses on social enterprise because of the potential to contribute to improved labour market equality through challenging and enhancing standard labour market practices and delivering services in an inclusive way.

Objectives

• Assist social enterprises in developing their capacity as suppliers for the public sector

• Provide public sector agencies the opportunity to test innovative approaches towards achieving broader public benefit through mainstream expenditure

• Act as a clearing house for market intelligence on public sector demand and the supply of sustainable business solutions in the East Midlands, enabling social enterprises and public sector agencies to identify relevant opportunities

Activities

• Providing in-depth evidence in response to key questions such as “How can public sector expenditure be used more efficiently while achieving better social outcomes?” and “What added social value do social enterprises offer as suppliers?”
• Disseminating practice in the form of tools and reports to support further work on achieving public benefit through procurement in a policy and practice context

Target Groups 

The social enterprises working in the East Midlands

SEEM (Social Enterprise East Midlands) had observed the empty rhetoric about procurement and social enterprise and set a strategic aim to development the movement. It became apparent from early research that current materials and support systems to help social enterprises to develop were insufficient in themselves. SEEM initiated a major consultation exercise with a brief to set up a partnership which would find out how to do it and inform the development of better practice and policy. The aim was to work out the practicalities of making it real for both the demand and supply side, and to inform sound evidence-based policy making. The initial briefing paper created much interest from a wide variety of public organisations who were interested in forming a partnership to examine the issues and discover and fill the gaps to make procurement strategies work with social enterprise.