Community Benefits in Procurement

As part of our wider duties towards our citizens, we engage with suppliers, providers and contractors to deliver benefits to our young people and East Lothian residents.

Suppliers will generally develop links with local schools, provide work experience opportunities, training opportunities and apprenticeships, and assist with specific community projects. Community Benefits forms part of East Lothian Council’s Community Planning Economic Development Strategy.

We spend around £140m on goods, services and works every year. Community Benefit clauses provide a means of achieving sustainability (social, economic and environmental) in public contracts. It is about achieving additional benefit for the community in a contract over and above the direct benefit from the purchase of goods, services or works. The Council wish to achieve wider value from public spending, specifically to and for the benefit of the community. If £1 is spent on the purchase of goods, services and outcomes, can that same £1 be used to, at the same time, also produce a wider benefit to the community?

For successful tenderers there is a contractual obligation to deliver community benefits on individual contracts predominantly over £50K, or for smaller contracts, once the aggregated spend has reached £50K, and delivery of that benefit will be monitored as part of the contract monitoring process. Should your tender submission be successful, our Community Benefits Coordinator will contact you in order to support and guide you through the process, discuss the timing and delivery of your proposed community benefits and ascertain how these proposals meet our needs within the local community.