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Social Procurement Festival 2021

Last week, Head of Social Responsibility and Inclusion Kevin O Connor, and Commercial Director Shane Rooney, participated in the first annual Social Procurement Festival hosted by Supply Change.

The event, co-sponsored by Durkan, Peabody and Sovereign was an opportunity for organisations from both public and private sectors to learn about how social enterprises use their ‘not for profit’ work to re-invest back into sustainable growth, training and employment, community development and front-line services whilst providing social enterprises a platform to engage and network.

The use of social enterprises is part of the Government backed drive to ‘build back better’. The Government’s newly released Social Value Model makes ‘supply chain resilience and diversity’ a key priority, with any organisations tendering for work required to provide evidence of an engagement strategy and targets, in addition to an increase 10% minimum score for social value in all tenders, making a major shift in in favour of social procurement.

As Durkan look to lead by example and begin to create business opportunities with social enterprises, we hope to achieve a substantial increase in social enterprise business activity and start transforming engagement from small scale and occasional, to higher volume contracts based on long-term relationships.

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