Friday 27 January 2023 – The Postmortem Examination

Today I had a meeting to discuss suppliers’ social value contributions to the Cost of Living Crisis agenda.  The Assistant Director of Programmes and Assurance emailed my Head of Service asking if social value contributions to the council could be directed to his prioritised agenda.  Knowing that he hasn’t managed his service to either have any social value contributions or have any understanding as to what they are, rather than engage the AD, he referred him to his Social Value Officer: me.  The AD set up a meeting with me, the new Head of the Cost of Living Crisis Delivery Team, seconded from her role as a public Committee Coordinator, as well as the AD for Some Other Vague and Vacuous Thing.  After introductions that meant almost nothing to me except that all three were currently on the “Cost of Living Crisis Board”, the first AD said, “Why don’t you kick us off Paul”.

Well, I don’t see why because he called the meeting and didn’t actually say what it is about but, hey ho, let’s take this opportunity to manage expectations: “Okay.  I think this is going to be a short meeting because I don’t have any contributions to give you; we don’t really have a practical social value policy and it is currently under review by Corporate Procurement anyway.  In the meantime, what commitments have been made have been by our more progressive suppliers and they tend to be well-organised and have delivery plans in place and have already allocated their contributions to community projects they have researched and chosen.  I don’t know why my Head of Service referred you to me.”

I thought that would be the end of it but the other AD (which I found out later today led the Chief Executive’s Office before being seconded to do something about the Cost of Living Crisis much like I imagine the less mentally agile members of Stalin’s Politburo were seconded to do something about the cold in Siberia (a serious issue there)) wanted to know more about what has happened to all those social value commitments our Policy Officer and I told the Cost of Living Board about back in September (see The Cost of Living is Adding Up).  I told him that I told the Board then that collecting that £36m of committed contributions was not unconditional; that it needed dedicated staff time, co-operation from the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to tell their services to actually contract-manage the commitments in their awarded contracts, and for Legal to enforce undelivered social value targets in the council’s contracts.  And I reminded him that the Board, including him, said no.  I explained to him that we took the matter instead to our own Director (of the Economy Department) who said I was right to take it to him and he would do something about it, but he didn’t.  I explained to him that CAB hadn’t been considering my social value comments as part of their governance process to ensure that major procurements were compliant with Social Value policy since our last AD, a member of CAB and proponent of the Social Value Policy, left in May, that I hadn’t been asked to comment in any reports between May and November at all and, since December, my stark warnings about social value not having been delivered by suppliers being re-commissioned were not only ignored but deleted and re-written to say they had been delivered before the reports have been published.  Therefore, no new contracts have been awarded with social commitments for eight months.

Silence.  Then a snarl.  He was not happy.  Having worked with other council officers all his adult life and, for a long time I’m sure, council officers working for him, this was brutal clarity that he was not used to.  You could see in his face he wanted to go for me.  This was literally scandalous what I was telling him.  How could it be true; it was monumental dysfunction managing council resources upon which he was depending?  But why would I lie so brazenly and succinctly?  If it wasn’t true, it was a hell of a story I had just made up.  “This sounds very odd”, he said to me threateningly but seemingly unsure if it was odd.  It kind of sounded like it could be the kind of thing he and his fellow directors would do.  “Yes it is very odd”, I reassured him.  Clearly he was used to looking threatening to manage his staff but, on this occasion seemed unclear what his threat to me was.

Eventually he remembered the £36m of commitments.  “What about them?”, he snapped at me in lieu of having a gun to shoot the messenger.  “They fell off the other end of the contracts”, I explained to him.  “We did have £36m of social value commitments contracted, and then the contracts ended, SLT hadn’t asked their contract managers to contract-manage social value commitments and the contracts ended.”  I told him I asked Corporate Procurement for a list of the council’s major contracts so that I could chase the suppliers myself and the Commercial Manager told me they didn’t have a list.  I obviously questioned this with her, I explained, and she told me that the record of all contract awards was kept on the council’s Procurement Portal, CapitalESourcing, and, after each successful procurement, procuring managers in each service should update the Portal with the winning bidder but, as a matter of course, they usually didn’t bother, and no-one has been overseeing this legally required bureaucratic process.  So, I approached the Head of Legal (the Chief Solicitor), I carried on explaining, and asked her if the undelivered social value commitments could be enforced and we seek financial remedies.  I told him that she said no because of the way the social value schedule in the contracts was worded.  When I asked her who worded it, she told me her team had.

I have to give it to him, his face didn’t change.  His was a snarling grimace.  This was a one-trick manager who led by fear to illicit platitudes and assurances and, learned from the council’s own directors, straight lies like “contracts have delivered social value, with innovations in blah, blah blah…”  Reality wasn’t supposed to be talked about or else face his wrath.  But the Cost of Living Crisis does seem to be real and he didn’t know how to deal with the novelty of a principal officer’s casual observations on directors’ lack of direction encroaching on his fantasy plans, so he stuck to what he knew: snarling.  The other AD who asked me to “kick us off” seemed to be enjoying the show and was smiling on-screen.  The Head of this non-service looked like she was desperate for a paper bag to put over her head and pretend she wasn’t there, but she kept her camera on, although resolutely stayed on mute.

“This is very odd” the ex-Head of the CEX’s Office snarled again unchanging.  I didn’t bother mirroring his observation again; that would be a waste of everyone’s time and, with that same realisation, the first AD jumped in chirpily and, clearly amused by my performance, thanked me for my time (although not my candour) and bade farewell.