Agenda item

The officer introduced the report by explaining that this was a position update following a detailed report being brought to the committee earlier in the year. She reminded members that the Cabinet had agreed in July 2021 that the Council’s would enter into a mutually beneficial Delegation Agreement with Cardiff Council, for the discharge and provision of our strategic and operational procurement services. The committee was being invited to scrutinise progress including the development of an associated training plan for Officers.

The officer explained that early changes had been realised and she thanked Cardiff’s Head of Procurement and our Procurement Manager for their hard work in achieving these so early. She presented the key points outlined in the report and drew members attention to the progress section, reminding the committee of the objectives and anticipated outcomes of this partnership working initiative. 

The chair invited questions from members.

Member Questions: 

·         What are the early wins for Monmouthshire in this collaboration?

We have been able to bring some of the experience and knowledge we’ve developed over the last few years in Cardiff to assist Monmouthshire in the challenges going forward. We have started To develop a procurement strategy but to date, have focussed n developing seven clear objectives to provide a clear sense of direction of travel, for example, decarbonisation, social value, which are very challenging. We would like to help MCC accelerate their work, by drawing on our experience and lessons learnt, so that MCC doesn’t have to go through the same learning curve. For example, in Cardiff, we have undertaken Carbon Modelling, so that will be to MCC’s advantage.  The ‘Toms Model’, which is concerned with achieving social value is something Cardiff has been at the forefront in introducing in Wales and we are starting to see the fruition of this work.   The attention to detail around some of MCC’s spending for example, until now, there haven’t been the resources to examine this in such depth and this has given us the opportunity to undertake this important reflection.

·         The most important thing in my view is the resource to be undertake this detailed analysis and it’s clear that we didn’t have the ability to be able to analyse the detail.  It’s not all about saving money, although there will be opportunities to save money, it’s about realising the value of the money that is spent. I would like this committee to take a role in looking at these contracts in detail at a future point to see a return on investment.  I think there is huge potential and we are moving in exactly the right direction in maximising the value of the public’s money.

·         I am particularly interested in how you would make spend more accessible through business and the third sector, do you have any examples?

There aren’t any specific benefits we could highlight yet, but your contract procedure rules when redrafted for example, sought to require service areas to seek to include local business in opportunities. Some of the issues have been ‘how do our service areas know about local suppliers’ and there is some new software that is going to help us do that and tell us who those local contractors are.  We are looking at greater visibility of the approach of going to market and ensuring local businesses have the opportunity to bid for contracts, so that we can develop a clearer contract register so we can track and monitor that. We are trying to better understand areas of spend where we have a good use of local suppliers versus some areas where we are struggling. If we look at the detail, we may see there are no suppliers or that there are some who we could look to engage with.  We don’t want to do this work in isolation, but collaborate with others and with Welsh Government, so an example of a partnership piece of work we are currently undertaking is ‘improving the visibility of local suppliers’.

The 3 dedicated procurement officers that will be recruited will help us get some real traction on this. It is difficult to recruit experienced procurement officers but we have recruited to one of the 3 posts which mean MCC will have more capacity than previously, but we have had to focus on clarity of objectives, analysing spend and developing robust governance. The new posts should help us develop our forward plans.

·         Can you tell me how this relates to social care recruitment?

This sector has some unique challenges and we are doing a specific piece of work in Cardiff on this at the moment to understand how spend is being managed in the organisation. To date, we have been concentrating on getting the foundations right.

·         What do you mean by supporting social value and socio-economic?  I am keen to know exactly what that means and how public sector spend will support communities that are currently socially excluded.

I would comment that if you are asking whether MCC has maximised opportunities to achieve social value before now, the answer would be probably not, but this is exactly what this collaboration is about so that we are not simply complying with governance regulations, but learning how to proactively make progress in ensuring the ‘living wage’ is paid. Therefore, we are taking the time to be very clear about what our objectives are. I understand your view that we should have been doing this already, but it’s challenging and MCC wants to work with Cardiff to learn and develop from the position we are currently in.

·         Where can we see the granular information on our contracts? Is this something we can expect fairly soon?

We are trying to tackle this on a number of fronts ~ through firstly a greater visibility of how money is being spent, but secondly, on how this informs our forward plan of how money will be spent in the future. We can only move forward from the current position we are in. 

Chairs Conclusion

The chair offered thanks to MCC officers and the Head of Strategic Procurement at Cardiff Council for their time in attending to present the committee with a progress report. It was agreed that officers would be invited to return in 9 months’ time to provide a further progress update.