Agenda item

5.1

Alison Norris from Sheffield Climate Alliance asked the following question:

Retrofitting housing has significant potential to generate wealth for Sheffield by increasing local business opportunities and creating good quality local jobs.  How is the council:

·       making sure it understands our SME sector, and the barriers facing SMEs who wish to bid for PAS2035 compliant retrofitting work

·       using development of the council's Community Wealth Building Charter to analyse and address procurement barriers faced by SMEs

·       networking with other city councils and with combined authorities to share lessons about how to increase procurement from local supply chains (e.g. North East Procurement Organisation NEPO233 Retrofit & Decarbonisation Works)

The Chair responded that:

The Council works with SMEs across Sheffield through its supply chain engagement, economic development and employment and skills functions.  The Council is supporting local construction SMEs to:

• Understand the skills their workforce need to gain compliance with PAS 2035 and PAS 2030 and support them to access that training.  We are capacity building local training providers to meet these needs

• Build capacity in local businesses to apply for contracts and sub-contracts as well as ensuring they are marketed locally

We also apply due consideration to how we procure in line with our ethical procurement policy to ensure where possible that packages are suitable for the local market.

The Council considers Social Value in all its procurement and planning activities.  We use tools to lever in additional benefits in terms of growth, social equity, sustainability and innovation which includes setting targets for and supporting contractors to spend locally and facilitate employment and training of local people.  This has been further strengthened in the soon to be published Local Plan.

Sheffield City Council leads the regional Strategic Procurement Group Construction Sub Group, which brings together construction procurement professionals from across the Y&H region. Maximising participation from local SMEs is at the forefront of the group’s agenda.

The Council are happy to listen and take on further good practice and feedback from SMEs.

For higher value works, we sometimes use the YORhub suite of regional frameworks (amongst others). YORhub delivers a Supply Chain Engagement Programme. This links smaller, local contractors with larger principal contractors with the aim of them securing work through principal contractors’ supply chain. Sometimes projects are too large in scale or value - or too broad in professional discipline - for one smaller contractor to undertake the works. That’s when being part of a wider local supply chain can really boost local businesses. 

We consider a range of procurement options for every procurement we undertake and are of course happy to consider NEPO’s new framework (which we understand has yet to be launched) alongside other frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems or conventional competitive procurements.