The Good Procurement Guide – Procurement for Community Public Good, March 2021

The importance of public value

“As we see it, public services are very different from private services and the notion of public value is important in making that distinction. Reframing public value to be market-shaping while delivering outcome-based public services which maximise the wider economic, environmental and social impact of services could help to create better public value and services that are closer and nearer to local communities. So measuring public value outcomes becomes relevant to all public services and helps to shape them. Our route map to success highlights the process.”

Rising to the challenge 

Never in a lifetime, has the challenge facing public services in the UK been so great. Whatever the extent of the public services challenge, the economic challenge is equal, and public procurement should be used to deliver public value.

Communitising our public procurement process

Procurement for Community Public Good provides a route map through the public procurement process that seeks to maximise community involvement, engagement and participation and deliver community good as a result.

We need to increasingly communitise our public procurement processes so that they are more:

• closely aligned with the needs of our local communities across the extent of our country;
• make the most of our local assets including our people – their hopes and aspirations, their skills and talents, their kindness and commitment to the communities in which they live;
• more sensitively respond to the broader economic, environmental and social challenges that we face around the world as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

#BetterForUs Commission

Building upon Aspire’s experience of the procurement process, a small commission was set up to steer the work and review the text , with representatives of both sides of business and the legal profession.

Members of the Commission were Aspire Board Members – Dheeraj Choudhary and Tim Page; Kate Dearden, Head of Research at Community, and Jamie Potter, Deputy Managing Partner, Bindmans LLP. Our Director, Dr. Katharine Sutton drafted the report on its behalf.

The Good Procurement Guide
Download here