Community Benefits

We are committed to promoting Sustainable Development through our policies, strategies and services.  The aim is to build stronger communities, reduce social exclusion and poverty and encourage the development of the economy. The inclusion of Community Benefits in public sector procurement is designed to support this approach when tendering for construction, service or supplies contracts. Helping to maximise the impact on public spending and achieving best value for money.

Community Benefits are sometimes referred to as Social Clauses or Social Requirements, they cover a whole range of areas:

Employment and Training Opportunities

• Recruit and train long term economically inactive persons and or 16-24 year olds not in education employment or training (NEETs) as part of the workforce delivering this contract.
• You might be required to agree to a set number of person weeks of employment/experience per annum (To be agreed upon contract award). A person-week is the equivalent of one person working for 5 days either on site, or through a mix of on-site work and off-site training (paid or unpaid).
• Consider employing an apprentice during the contract period.
• Offer work placements to school, colleges and university students as part of their course or for any individual interested in gaining experience in your sector.

Supply Chain Opportunities

• Create opportunities for SME’s to bid for work through the supply chain.
• Sign up to various mentoring schemes to provide advice and support to new companies or SME’s.

Additional Benefits

• Community Initiatives: Volunteering days, Contribute to community regeneration schemes, Sponsor mini sporting tournaments e.g. rugby or football etc.
• Educational Contributions: Engage positively with school-age children; Work placements for secondary-school children and college students, Visits to primary schools to engage with younger children, Provide educational opportunities to local schools e.g. site visits etc., Development of bespoke qualifications with local colleges.

Depending on the tender process in question there will be instructions included as part of the Invitation to Tender Pack on how to include community benefits.

You are likely to be asked to submit a Community Benefit Method Statement as part of your submission which will either be scored as part of the quality evaluation at tender stage or not evaluated during the tender but considered for the successful tenderer and form part of the Terms and Conditions of the contract thereafter. These two different approaches are called Core and Non Core.

Where Community Benefits have been identified as a core part of the requirement and are therefore included as part of the award criteria. Tenderers Community Benefit’s submissions are evaluated with the rest of the tender. If Community Benefits are non-core they will not be evaluated as part of the tender process (no scores are allocated at either Selection or Award stage), however they may be included as conditions of the contract upon award.

There are a range of external agencies available to offer support to you in completing a Community Benefit Proposal. These include a Supplier Development Service (e.g. CBSA), Jobcentre Plus, Careers Wales, Further Education Colleges (e.g. Coleg Sir Gâr), Higher Education Universities (e.g. University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).