Mandatory ‘social value’ weighting of 10pc for all NHS procurement

Alexandra Hammond, NHSE’s head of sustainable procurement, told HSJ the requirement is due to come into force for all NHS bodies from April 2022, but urged procurement chiefs to start using the metric straight away.

It will mean factors such as local employment and decarbonisation will need to be considered when procuring anything from consumables to entire services.

A social value requirement had already been proposed for NHS commissioners earlier this year, while “central government” bodies have been subject to a 10 per cent weighting requirement since last year.

Speaking at an HSJ event about sustainability issues, Ms Hammond said of the plans: “It’s thinking about the community, decarbonisation, local employment, wellbeing and making sure people have opportunities for training and development.

“We really encourage trusts to look at what the need is in their areas, what social issues need to be resolved, and what areas can a supplier help improve things — those things are at the heart of the social value model.”

She said “health-specific” guidance was being prepared for publishing in the autumn.

NHSE is also developing a framework through which up to 100,000 suppliers must demonstrate their progress towards carbon neutrality if they wish to keep selling goods and services to the health service.

Ms Hammond said the “Evergreen” framework would rank suppliers, as “meeting expectation”, “seed”, “sapling” or “evergreen”. Any supplier not meeting the minimum expectations would not be contracted after 2030, she said.

Ms Hammond said the framework, which would be updated every few years, would likely involve a “relatively low administrative cost” self-assessment by the supplier with NHSE carrying out spot-checks.

She added: “For suppliers who are way ahead and have ambitious targets and engaging their supply chains they will shoot up that maturity matrix fast. They will be saplings or evergreen and that can be a differentiating factor in the decision-making process.”

Ms Hammond’s team is also exploring how NHS organisations should calculate their supply chain’s carbon footprint. She said she was aware companies are approaching trusts to do individual analyses, which risked “confusion” as their methodology may differ.