BEST Procurement- Social

enterprises in public
procurement markets
By Tim Curtis, Research Fellow, Sustainable
Development Research Centre.

October 2005
 Public procurement and social
enterprises

Background
As part of its review of the public sectori, New Labour has attempted to find a ‘Third
Way’ii to deliver health and social care services in the UK iii, characterized as
‘governance’iv: ‘selforganising, inter-organisational networks’ which promise locally
responsive services with the state acting as an ‘enabler’ rather than a direct provider
of servicesv. Part of the rhetoric of this approach is epitomized by the emphasis New
Labour places on ‘partnership’ working – Jupp found the term ‘partnership’ used over
6,000 times in Parliament during 1999 as compared to 38 times in 1989vi. The
discourse of partnership appears to be becoming a ubiquitous feature of the welfare
landscape such that it has become a hegemonic termvii.

Part of this ecology of ‘third’ provision is the (reviii)-emergence of the social enterprise
populating a specific niche in the capitalist economy. Jo Barraketi’six literature review
reports that in 1999, the Social Exclusion Unit Policy Action Team released a report,
Enterprise and Social Exclusion, which identified a range of obstacles to the
stimulation of entrepreneurial activity in socially excluded areas. This report led to the
establishment of the national Phoenix Fund, which is specifically designed to
contribute to community capacity building by encouraging entrepreneurship – through
social and commercial enterprise - in socially excluded communities. In 2000, the
Social Investment Taskforce – an initiative of the UK Social Investment Forum in
partnership with the New Economics Foundation and the Development Trusts
Association – made a number of recommendations to government, including the
expansion of the Phoenix Fund, establishment of a community investment tax credit,
matched government contributions to community development venture funds, and the
support of community development financial initiativesx.

In 2002, social enterprise was explicitly linked to the UK public policy agenda, with
the establishment of the sector’s peak body, the Social Enterprise Coalition, and the
release of a three year action plan, Social Enterprise: A Strategy for Success by the
Department of Trade and Industryxi. A social enterprise unit was established within
DTI to advance the Government’s key objectives of:

• creation of an enabling environment for social enterprise

• making social enterprises better businesses

• establishing the value of social enterprisexii

There is now clear governmental support for social enterprises and in particular in
their role in providing goods and services to the public sector, as an additional role of
achieving their specific social outcomes and in order to develop long term self
sufficiency (from public or private grant giving). The Small Business Servicexiii states:
“The Government is committed to promoting greater understanding of social
enterprises among public sector procurers and to increasing expertise on procurement
within social enterpreise [sic]”.

Public procurement opportunities for social enterprises are most likely to arise in the
delivery of public services. Social enterprises are deemed to be close to their
customers and do not exist to maximise profits for disinterested external shareholders.

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 Public procurement and social
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The government view is that social enterprises are often well placed to be able to
deliver good quality, cost-effective public services. In addition, social enterprises can
demonstrate the worth of innovative new practices to increase the participation of
staff and users in service delivery.

The only policy instruments that threatens the hegemony of social enterprises as a
third way of public goods and service provision are EU procurement rules and the
implementation of the Gershon report

Gershon efficiencies
The Gershon report is a government initiative to look at ways in which councils can
make the best use of the resources available for the provision of public services.
Among the areas it tackles are information and communications technology services,
staff reform and the sharing of best practice.

The aim of the reforms are to reduce administration and other costs and place more
investment into frontline services. The treasury estimate that current guidelines will
save councils the equivalent to £20b a year by 2007-08 or 2.5% savings for every
council department per yearxiv.

These targets have produced a whole swathe of extra public spending in order to
identify and achieve 2.5% efficiency savings. The Regional Centre of Excellence for
the East Midlandsxv has a major programme of work, providing 53 reports and toolkits
on the subjects of procurement and local government efficiency. The way this work
has entered into the mythology of local government procurement has been to require a
2.5% cut in spending either by doing less or buying less, much despite the
protestations of those helping the “sector to realise efficiencies and improve
performance by marshalling and publishing best practice, challenging with best
practice, and supporting improvement (targeted on those councils in most need)xvi”.

The challenge for the social enterprise supplychain, therefore, is to provide more for
less, whereas it would prefer to be in the situation of demonstrating wider benefits and
indicating that it can do more than other suppliers for the same or slightly more,
helping local authorities achieve cross-budget line savings.

EU Procurement
The internal market legislation of the European Union obliges public authorities to
adhere to formally agreed and transparent procedures when spending public money.
In general, thresholds apply so that the larger the financial value of a contract to be
let, the stricter the rules which are to be applied. These rules are derived from the
EU’s Public Procurement directives, which were last revised in December 2003.
Unfortunately, if they are applied without regard to their knock-on effects, the result
can be counter-productive.

A ‘Strengthening the Social Economy’ Equal paperxvii reviews five procurement rule
reasons constraining the use of social enterprises in the delivery of public goods and
services. The first reason for this is that public authorities often wish to buy not a
product but a service. While the quality of a material product can usually be measured
at the time it is delivered, services are delivered over an extended period of time.

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
Their quality therefore needs to be monitored continuously, and the sustainability of
the benefits created needs to be taken into account.

Secondly, the measures of value-for-money and quality need to be multi-dimensional.

If monetary cost is taken as the only criterion of value, then the tendency will be to try
to achieve economies of scale by specifying large and uniform contract conditions.
Thus the quality benefits of smaller-scale provision, tailored to users’ needs, risk
being lost. This approach also discriminates against SMEs, often at a cost to the local
economy.

There is also a time dimension. In social services, quality depends crucially on the
nature of the relationships between those providing and those using the service. These
relationships are often built up over time. The authority cannot therefore “chop and
change” suppliers in social services. If it allocates contracts purely on cost criteria, it
will encourage bidders to compete on cost alone, and will thus prevent any of them
building up the high quality that depends on an investment of time.

A more general barrier is the culture of procurement officials, which tends to be

averse to risk rather than willing to manage risk. This leads to the continuation of
existing arrangements and slows innovation. This might be an oversimplification.
Certainly risk aversion is the symptom of the issue, but it is more likely that corporate
governance culture within local authorities is based on the concept of zero risk
procurement, rather than risk sharing to achieve better value. It must also be noted
that a significant proportion of individual purchases, commissions and procurement
events within local authorities are not handled by ‘procurement professionals’ but
rather section heads or other commissioning officers.

Finally, the procedures involved in bidding for public sector contracts are relatively
complicated. To achieve a level playing field and allow innovative solutions to
surface, there is therefore a need to train social enterprise managers in these
procedures.

The SBS are thus forced to admit that “There is currently a lack of expertise in many
parts of the social enterprise sector about public procurement practices and processes,
and, in some cases, lack of recognition of the contracting opportunities that local
authorities and other public sector procurers may offer. The Government believes
social enterprise need assistance to develop their capacity to bid for contracts and
better access to information about forthcoming tender opportunities, as well as
guidance on how to express their financial and social competitiveness in their bidsxviii”

BEST procurement
In recognition of the issues set out above the overall aim of the BEST Procurement
Development Partnership is to increase the conversion rate between public
expenditure and social and environmental improvement within the East Midlands
Region. This will be achieved by demonstrating improved value for public money,
establishing social enterprises as key delivery agents for this goal.

The BEST Procurement Development Partnership is focused on improving the

prevailing conditions in the labour market in order to achieve long term structural
change that increases equality in the labour market. Disadvantage in the labour

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 Public procurement and social
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market is created not only by the relative situation of the "disadvantaged" individuals
but also by the value ascribed by the labour market to those individuals and their
situation and willingness to include them.

The DP intends to help social enterprises and voluntary and community sector
organisations to access procurement opportunities made available by the public sector,
to help the public sector purchase better labour market outcomes through its
mainstream procurement practices and to help social enterprises to provide high
quality employment opportunities for people from BME communities, women, people
with disabilities and people aged over 50 year.

The main partners are public sector bodies (local authorities and health sector bodies),
charities and academic institutions working on issues of sustainable development,
social enterprises and social enterprise support agencies and strategic regional and
national agencies.

The DP is focused on achieving a change in practice within the East Midlands Region
that other parts of the country can learn from, that provides evidence of use to national
policy makers and ultimately that informs European policy.

The DP’s aim is to increase the conversion rate between public expenditure and
labour market equality within the East Midlands Region. To do this it is necessary to
improve value for public money in targeted areas and establish the social economy,
particularly social enterprises and voluntary and community sector organisations, as
key players in achieving this goal.

The East Midlands public procurement marketplace

Identifying the size of the local authority procurement market in the East Midlands is
extraordinarily difficult. It was hoped that the initial market research would yield
detailed analysis of local authority and health trust spend patterns which would enable
the BEST Procurement programme to identify a new or significant opportunity for
social enterprises but it became clear in discussions with local authorities and, through
links with other organisations, the health care trusts, it transpired that, in the East
Midlands at least, detailed knowledge within public authorities of actual spend
patterns was extremely limited. Many public authorities are only recently
investigating their own spend patterns, establishing that the public expenditure is so
decentralised that, below a major function level, the public authority retains little or
no capability for central analysis of data. Extensive literature searches did not yield
any more useful information apart from a market survey derived from national
statistics

All the documentation reviewed that encourages SMEs or SE’s to compete for public
procurement opportunities do not discuss the amount of expenditure in detail –
restricting the prediction to a national figure of £40bn.. There are no regional studies
available, although one may be available from the East Midland Centre of
Procurement Excellence (publication date unknown). In the absence of aggregate data
for the East Midlands, two of the partner local authorities have provided internal data
which indicates the level and breakdown of the spend patterns.

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 Public procurement and social
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One local authority (A) reports a spend of £331m. The top 10 spending categories
account for £226m (28% of the total spend) and include those indicates in Figure 1.
Of this spend, it is possible to assume that two categories present a significant
opportunity for SE’s in the type of service provision and the ability to distinguish
between SEs and other suppliers – voluntary services and grants which represent a
spend of £28m.

Figure 1 Top 10 Categories of spend by Council A

*UNCAT= uncategorised

The list of categories was reviewed with a view to identifying those spend categories
that, in the first analysis, present a significant opportunity for SE’s in the type of
service provision and the ability to distinguish between SEs and other suppliers.
These are listed in Figure 2. These opportunities represent a maximum of £80m in one
local authority alone. Very little else is known about these categories, so the analysis
is retricted to the common sense understanding of what types of purchasing might be
assigned to these categories. In other words, one has to assume that laundry is the use
of mobile laundering services, that, for an SE, might, at least, be staffed with
disadvantaged labour with perhaps other social benefits being realised (such as
training and education). Items such as ‘not known’ and ‘various fees’ indicate where
gaps in budgets are taken up by miscellaneous expenditure and which might present
an ad hoc opportunity for SE’s. Certainly, these account for £7m, which is a
significant opportunity for a entrepreneurial SE. It would be expected that a relatively
small proportion of the ‘market share’ could be taken up by SE’s as issues such as
inertia, reputation and risk will reduce the adoption of more innovative (i.e. blended
value) procurement opportunities. If one was to assume a target of 20% of the market
share, then the procurement market for entrepreneurial SEs in this one council
location could be valued at £16m.

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
Figure 2 Significant opportunities for Social Enterprises from one local authority

The above data represent estimated based on a number of assumptions, but represent
the best data available at the time. With active public authority partners in Stage II of
the BEST Procurement programme, it is planned that better, and more specific data
will be developed specifically for the project. In addition, it was not fully appreciated
at the start of the programme, that identifying an area of public authority spend will
only be useful with a detailed understanding of services already being provided by
social enterprises, their capacity to deliver services at the moment and their capacity
to expand and change to meet new opportunities. Again, such data was not readily
available, necessitating a detailed survey, firstly to identify social enterprises in the
East Midlands (as distinct from voluntary and community activities that do not intend
to provide services or good n return for income) and subsequently to ask detailed
questions regarding their capacity. This survey is ongoing, and will yield the
information required. In addition, as social enterprises join the BEST Procurement DP
as beneficiaries, extensive engagement with the management teams of the enterprises
will allow market opportunities to be identified, based on their existing capacity and
ambitions, linked to market information being provided by the public authority
partners.

Qualitative Market analysis

The quantitative analysis of public procurement has provided some data, although not
very robust, indicating the current and potential future spend patterns of local
authorities. To develop a richer understanding of the market place for social
enterprises an analysis of the procurement and community strategies of local

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
authorities was undertaken, to establish whether it was possible to identify some key
areas in which the BEST Procurement DP might focus.

The procurement and community strategy documents were downloaded from

Nottinghamshire Council and other Council websites across the East Midlands on
14/02/05 and analysed by two methods:
• A proprietary document analysis tool -Compare It! which is a full-featured
visual file comparison and merging tool that allows the user to compare and
work with different versions of the same text file. A colour-coded side-by-side
comparison makes it easy to understand the differences between two files at a
glance. The software also provides statistics on the commonly used words and
words that are unique to each document
• A qualitative analysis to identify words and phrases that are relevant to the
BEST Procurement market model and this represent a structured market
analysis for Social Enterprises

Although the Nottinghamshire County Council’s two documents are the most closely
related of all the local authorities in the East Midlands, they do not generally share the
same terminology, being only 13% similar. This is primarily because each document
is aimed at two different issues, although the procurement strategy could be assumed
to be ‘embedded’ in the community strategy as it lays out the means by which the
local authority’s allocated budgets will be procured – i.e. the conditions under which
Social Enterprises, when providing services mentioned in the Community Strategy,
would compete with other service providers.

Table 1 Comparison of Nottinghamshire Procurement and Community strategies

Description Amount
Common words 553
Unique words in left file 1346
Unique words in right file 1077
Similarity (by keywords), % 13

In comparison, two community strategies compared with one another (Table 2) show
a higher rate of correlation (17%), but comparing two procurement strategies shows
that there is less (8%) correlation between the two documents, indicating that there are
significant differences in approach, making meaningful statistical analysis difficult
but also indicating the complexities of market analysis with a number of different
local authorities whose needs and priorities are significantly different.

Table 2 Comparison of Derbyshire County and Northampton Borough Community strategies

Description Amount
Common words 1054
Unique words in left file 1677
Unique words in right file 1372
Similarity (by keywords), % 17

To compare against a national benchmark, the Nottinghamshire procurement strategy,

when compared to the ODPM National Strategy for Procurement, yields a 19%
similarity (Table 3).

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
Table 3 Comparison of Nottinghamshire procurement against national benchmark
Description Amount
Common words 1000
Unique words in left file 950
Unique words in right file 1688
Similarity (by keywords), % 19

These tests indicate that the community and procurement strategies are relatively
closely related, when compared to the relationship between the national and local
procurement strategies. Exploring more deeply, Table 4 shows the frequency of
keywords in the documents which indicate the priorities and pressures on the local
authorities expressed in the strategies. This is not a perfect representation of the
drivers, but the above analysis gives an approximation of the concerns uppermost in
the drafters and consultees for each paper.

Table 4 Keywords in Procurement and Community Strategies

Procurement Strategy Community Strategy
Frequency Frequency
Keyword Keyword
procurement 115 county 39
performance 38 young 20
Best 38 crime 17
Value 32 transport 13
Plan 26 rates 12
process 25 population 11
Strategic 24 youth 9
management 21 rural 9
contract 19 natural 9
staff 17 county’s 9
cost 17 accidents 9
objectives 15 towns 8
goods 15 residents 7
corporate 15 partners 7
competition 15 housing 7
Authority 15 Forum 7
terms 14 children 7
suppliers 14 agencies 7
e-procurement 14 recreation 6
contractors 14 Partnership 6
arrangements 14 community 6
customer 12 facilities 6
works 11 engagement 6
practice 11 build 6
money 11 age 6
equality 11 Youth 5
tendering 10 wildlife 5
Performance 10 sharing 5
legal 10 schools 5

The analysis of the community and procurement strategies for local authorities in the
East Midlands has indicated that there is little or no apparent connectivity between the
two sets of documents. Preliminary work undertaken by Forum for the Future on
health sector procurement has indicated a similar lack of connectivity xix. Procurement
in the public authorities and the NHS in the East Midlands is highly fragmented and
complex and although the principles of the NHS Good Corporate Citizen initiative
and local authority Community Strategies are beginning to rise in importance for key
players in procurement processes, at present, more traditional factors - cost, quality,

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
after sales service and timeliness -dominate decisions and contracts. Because of this,
some procurement decisions continue to generate unwanted externalities. As a result,
numerous opportunities for public procurement activities to boost the local economy,
strengthen local communities and contribute to environmental protection are missed.
The following figure, from preliminary work undertaken by Forum for the Future xx
summarizes the current perceived barriers to linking the NHS Good Corporate Citizen
initiative to procurement and much the same can be said to be true for local authority
procurement in supporting community strategies.

Current Barriers to Sustainable Procurement

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The fact that there isn't a significant level of connectivity demonstrates the need for
the BEST Procurement Development Partnership. The strategy of the DP is to
improve connectivity between labour market issues and procurement so it is important
to identify issues within the community strategies of local authorities that can and
should be more clearly linked with respect to procurement strategies, and, more
importantly, practice.

To inform this process, a more qualitative investigation of the two sets of strategies
was undertaken. The two sets of community and procurement strategies were
analysed to identify phrases (as opposed to key words) that have meaning for a social
enterprise. These phrases are recorded in Table 5:
Table 5 Qualitative analysis of community and procurement strategy phrases relevant to social
enterprise
Community Strategy Procurement Strategy
Add value Account whole-life costs
Location of business Social value
Sustainable communities Impact on other services
Community cohesion Impact on social inclusion
Young people Impact of social services

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 Public procurement and social
enterprises
Community Strategy Procurement Strategy
Employment opportunities Degree of competition
Most deprived Measure performance
New dwellings Impact of skills and knowledge
Rural traffic Support strategic direction of Authority
wastes Ethical procurement pays dividends
Public protection Legal, ethical and transparent
Emergency planning Environmental and sustainable
Alcohol and drugs strategies Local economy
Fire safety Small/medium sized enterprises
Road safety Equal access to employment
Sports and recreation Equality of opportunity
Natural assets Local sourcing
Public transport Local workforce
campaigns New markets
litter Social enterprises
noise Economic disadvantage
Grass cutting Community benefit clauses
cleanliness Demonstrating benefits achieved
Small firm formation
Ageing population
Special education needs
Raise skill levels
Access to work
Job creation
Vulnerable communities
Health promotion
Managing debt
Teenage pregnancy
Elderly people
Drug and alcohol misuse
Support for carers
Respite care
Sheltered housing
Residential homes
Local decision-making
Active citizenship
Portal to services

To a certain extent, these phrases reflect the jargon of the present policy environment.
On the other hand, they are a clear indication to a social enterprise of what benefits
the local authority will be seeking out of what specific areas of development,
regardless of actual current spend. Thus they represent clear market development
opportunities. Although it is not possible, at this stage, to make links between these
areas of community concern and actual current public expenditure and thus
representative of an existing market for social enterprises, the issues suggested in
Table 5 can form the basis of a coherent potential market for social enterprise activity.
Clearly, local authorities have developed community strategies, and as expenditure
comes more into line with these strategies, opportunities for social enterprises will
increase.

BEST Procurement Demand side programme

The BEST Procurement programme is designed to intervene in the market place
between social enterprise suppliers and local authority and health care procurers in
order to enhance the maturity of the supplychain. The social enterprise oriented
supplyside interventions have been described in detail in a prior paperxxi whereas the
activities of the public sector are much less well defined, partly because it was felt by
the BEST Procurement Action 1 team that the policies and activities of entire local
authorities and Primary Care Trust were less influencable as whole than individual,
and more flexible, social enterprises. It was also felt that there was such a significant

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 Public procurement and social
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background of policy development, research and toolkit publication at different levels
in the demand-side of the market that the local authorities would benefit more from
self-defining their activities, providing information and activity oriented towards
supporting the social enterprises engaging with BEST Procurement. Nonetheless, the
proposed programme of work from the local authorities was designed to cover the
following issues:

• Stage 1
o Undertaking a baseline review of influencable spend
o Determining the percentage of influencable spend and the number of
contracts who are related to this spend
o Identifying numbers of social enterprises that have contracted with the
council
o Identifying the nature of the contracts and the location of the
organisations we contract with.
o Looking at management information systems which are able to
monitor number of employees, location, ethnicity, gender and
disability status of the supplier.
• Stage 2
o Consideration of the key issues facing both social enterprises
contracting to NCC and other local authorities
o The legal context – with specific reference to the use of Community
benefit Clauses
o Considering how supply chains of existing prime contractors can be
opened up to Social Enterprises
• Stage 3
o Making the links between the strategic objectives and the procurement
outcome explicit
o Reviewing the relevant part of the procurement strategy and policies
o Implementation of research findings including development of pilot
projects within the council
o Development /Awareness raising sessions with procurement
/commissioning staff on the value or option of social enterprise as a
supplier
The demand-side of the Development Partnership aims to create a level playing field
for social enterprises. Some of this will be achieved through practical change but
much of it will involve a significant cultural change within the council, which is hard
to quantify.

Is public procurement for social enterprise?

The value of social enterprises for the public sector is clear and well documented,
what is less clear is the value of public procurement for the social economy. Notes
from the First annual conference of the Social Economy Network of Northern
Irelandxxii indicate a level of antipathy:

“A) Public procurement is merely the government seeking the delivery of services on
the cheap? (Distinction between service level agreements and procured contracts of

12
 Public procurement and social
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work). Organisations concerned they’re being pushed towards an arena in which they
have little capacity.
B) Individuals and organisation require intensive training to become skilled in the
processes of procurement.
C) Tender designers need to be specific in terms of what they mean and require in
terms of added value from the sector
D) A need for the public sector to account and appraise procurers tenders on the
strength of their pursuit of social goals and how to accounting or audit the social
dimension in relation to the economic ideal of ‘value for money’ or ‘best fit’.”

A more profound critique, but no more relevant than that above, comes from an
emerging critical social theory perspective in that the social economy is predicated on
a failure that cannot be filled by throwing money, either by grant or procurement, at
the problem, that effective social provision rises “out of failure, brokenness and
death” so that such “entrepreneurial action stor[ies] fits so neatly into, and is
supported by, New Labour discourse, there is no comparable policy envelope for the
slower, more relational story of growth through brokenness, failure and passivity
amidst vulnerability and social exclusion.xxiii” This critique suggests the potential for
‘mission’ drift as the stories social enterprises tell about themselves change as the
enterprise moves from economic vulnerability and heightened sense of social justice
to financial stability but with priorities subsumed by those of its funding ‘clients’.
This disquiet s mirrored in Dart’sxxiv paper investigating a US mental health care
charity that, faced with drastic grant cuts, became ‘more business-like’ under a new
CEO and rationalised its service offering under new contracts, leading from
supporting the clients until the need for support subsided to a packaged service of
three days support. If the client’s needs were not met within the three day package,
they were referred on, one assumes to another provider, or else outside the care
support system. Although these closing comments may appear to be isolated
afterthoughts, it should be asserted that these critiques indicate a fundamental
resistance to the adoption of the ‘social enterprise in procurement’ model which needs
to be addressed at the level of critique suggested by the authors.

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References

14
i
Powell, M. ed. (1999) New Labour, New Welfare State?, Bristol: The Policy Press.
ii
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
iii
Jessop, B. (2000) ‘Governance Failure’ in B. Stoker (ed.) The New Politics of British Urban Governance.
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iv
Rhodes, R. (1997) Understanding Governance, Buckingham: Open University Press and Stoker, G. (2000) ‘Urban
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viii
The UK has a distinct historical tradition of social enterprise. The modern cooperative form was established by a
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ix
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x
Social Investment Taskforce (2004) ‘Enterprising Communities: wealth beyond welfare’ [online], [accessed 27/10/05]
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xi
Pharoah, C. & Scott, D. (2004) Social Enterprise in the Balance London. Charities Aid Foundation
xii
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xiii
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[accessed 27/10/0]
xiv
The requirement for councils is to achieve 2.5% per annum improvements on their
2004/5 baseline, of which at least half should be cashable. By 2007/8, efficiency gains
equivalent to 7.5% of the 2004/5 baseline should be achieved.
xv
With a budget of £1.4 million to deliver £242 million of savings, albeit without any direct control over spending
http://www.emce.gov.uk/about_us.htm [Accessed 27/10/05]
xvi
Delivering Efficiency in Local Services Detailed guidance for local authorities
http://www.emce.gov.uk/documents/publications/Delivering%20Efficiency%20in%20Local%20Services%20detailed
%20guidance%5B1%5D.pdf [Accessed 27/10/05]
xvii
StrengtheningtThe Social Economy Antwerp 10-12 May 2004 Workshop Briefing Document – Draft Public-Private-
Social Partnership And Public Procurement ETG2-DOC-108-v7-EN-wsbrief procurement
xviii
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has provided a significant tool in this area through its guidance note on
making a clear and defendable decision to partner with the social sector rather than traditional procurement
mechanisms. http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/data/your-council/data/strategy/downloads/3rd-sector-co-prac.pdf
xix
Pers comm. Ben Tuxworth and Emma Dolman March 2005
xx
Forum for the Future (2005) ‘Procuring sustainable health’ unpublished
xxi
BEST Procurement- Designing social enterprise business and procurement support programmes
Tim Curtis, Research Fellow, Sustainable Development Research Centre and Jennifer Inglis, Social Enterprise East
Midlands October 2005
xxii
http://www.socialeconomynetwork.org/pdfs/jobs/Social%20Economy%20Network%20Conference%20Report
%202004.pdf [accessed 27/10/05]
xxiii
Narratives of Social Enterprise From Biography to Practice and Policy Critique Lynn Froggett Department of Social
Work, University of Central Lancashire, UK Prue Chamberlayne School of Health and Social Welfare, Open
University, UK Qualitative Social Work
Sage Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol. 3(1): 61–77
xxiv
Being “Business-Like” in a Nonprofit Organization: AGrounded and Inductive Typology Raymond Dart Trent
University Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, June 2004 290-310