Blogs

To anyone crossing paths with public sector procurement these days the term ‘social value’ is inescapable. Since the Social Value Act (2012) it has crept into bids with several different solutions. Some methods like HACT or TOMs do their best to standardise the responses of companies competing for public sector work, this is helpful in ensuring that different submissions can be compared fairly but we must work hard to ensure community groups are championed in this approach. 

Why is this important?  

It's fair to say that people who live in an area know what it needs best, but despite the incredible work small groups do for their communities many of them suffer from low visibility, unless we are directly involved in them and the work that they do it’s hard to understand the huge impact that they have on our communities. 

In recent years it has also been repeatedly shown that community groups have been severely impacted by Covid-19, some key findings from Groundwork UK include: 

• Most community groups have decreased or closed services 
• Four in five community groups have lost income 
• Most community groups had fewer active volunteers during lockdown 
• Most say there is more need for their services in their communities than there was before lockdown 

At SWPA we keep this knowledge at the heart of our philosophy when it comes to our Community Benefit Fund which is run with our fund partner South West Community Matters and focuses on the small groups working to support their communities. 

SWPA encourage all public sector organisation running tenders with social value outcomes to understand the groups in their areas and to try to align the outcome with the community. This will ensure that any funding or volunteer help goes directly to the community and will have a much greater impact. 

Mary Bennell, Director at SWPA, says ‘We are immensely proud of the impact our community benefit fund has had on our clients’ communities, and when tenders are run with the same ideals the effects are evident. We hope that all public sector organisations and the companies they work with will keep pushing for meaningful social value outcomes that will have a direct and positive effect on their communities – we see championing small community groups as a gateway to achieving this.’ 

Community Spotlight 

In Gloucester the Hollie Gazzard Trust has a simple aim – to work to save lives by building individual and community resilience to domestic abuse. They work towards this in three ways: 

The first is by raising awareness; from helping young people understand the dangers of unhealthy relationships and what this can lead to, using Hollie’s tragedy as an example. Keeping our subscribers informed on the issues around domestic abuse and stalking via our monthly Hollie Gazzette and social media platforms. We also host various fundraising events throughout the year, such as our Golf Day, Annual Dinner and Walk4Hollie. 

Secondly, they help people create positive, happy, and safe relationships, free from abuse by providing education and guidance in schools, workplaces and other organisations. The Trust offers a series of workshops designed to fit both schools and colleges. 

Thirdly, they hope to prevent other people from going through what Hollie did before her death. The trust offers a free personal safety app, Hollie Guard in the hope this will help individuals experiencing domestic abuse and stalking to stay safe. 

SWPA are proud that the Hollie Gazzard Trust benefited from one of our grants, read more about what they were able to achieve with this in our latest case study here.