Kindred’s social directory, Based, champions the social supply chain, giving organisations a place to search for socially-trading organisations who supply services across Liverpool City Region – and beyond. But there are different ways to work social value into your supply chain – ACC Liverpool is a great example of how the city region’s anchor institutions can use their purchasing power and influence to support a local economy that’s kinder and fairer for everyone in it.
ACC Liverpool Group has put social value front and centre over the last two years, consciously paying attention to its role in the city and how the team can maximise its positive impact on the local area and beyond. It does this through four key strands: people, sustainability, industry influence and community.
In 2023, ACC Liverpool added social value to its procurement process, asking potential suppliers how they could collectively maximise positive impact, contributing to a healthier and more positive community.
Social value is now a scored part of the tender process (a minimum 10%), giving contractors the opportunity to align themselves with the ACC’s values – and consider how they can contribute to the health and wellbeing of the local area.
Its facilities management contract is a notable success, providing support for grassroots music venues in the city region through a three-way partnership between ACCL, Kimpton and Future Yard (you can read a case study about that here…)

“When we received the submission from Kimpton to be our facilities management services contractor, we knew straight away that they understood what we were trying to achieve,” says ACC’s Director of Marketing & Communications, Joanna Rowlands. “By offering their services to Future Yard, they were helping us support grassroots music, which is crucial to the success of our business.”
We spoke to Joanna and Susan Albanese, ACC’s Head of Procurement & Compliance, about their top tips for procurement with purpose.
Our tips for considering social value in a tender submission:
1. Do the research
Study the requirements, the industry, and specific needs of the contract.
2. Understand the organisation’s broader aims
Get to know the organisation by considering questions such as:
What is their mission?
What is important to them?
What are they trying to achieve?
How does this contract fit into the bigger picture?
3. Engage with social value
Consider your working practices and how they align to the organisation, consider two elements:
a. How you do business – articulate your working practices, how you look after staff and supply chain, how and where you procure your products and services, your commitment to sustainability initiatives or how you support diversity and inclusion across your workforce and supply chain. These might be processes and practices that you have embedded in your organisation but it is important to articulate them well and, importantly, show how these commitments help you deliver the contract.
b. What else could you do – consider what else you could do if you were awarded the contract. Would the contract enable you to support a local charity or provide value in kind to a smaller organisation in line with the organisation’s ambitions.
4. Consider added value
Consider what other added value you can bring that aligns you to the organisation, if scoring is close then this might be the thing that sets you apart from other suppliers.
Susan says: “The challenge at our end was aligning our procurement processes, to be open enough for smaller organisations to be in the room for the tender. It can be hard for local businesses to beat a global business on conventional tender processes – but being more open-ended with procurement gives you the opportunity to shine. Procurement with Purpose was key to making sure that social value would have an increasing influence in who we procure from…”
More detail:
ACC Liverpool follows the public sector procurement processes, and highlights some things to consider:
Use Find A Tender Service (FTS) to find public sector contacts.
The facilities management tender was advertised under the Open Procedure, so any organisation was able to express an interest, view the tender documentation and submit a bid. The evaluation criteria included 10% weighting for social value, in line with government guidance.
Public Sector Tender Opportunities are currently advertised via Contracts Finder.
ACC Liverpool Group uses the BIP Solutions “Delta” eTendering portal to manage its tenders. If you’re interested in supplying The ACC Liverpool Group, you’re advised to register on Delta.
For public sector procurement, the launch of the new Procurement Act in October 2024 (and with it the new Procurement Regulations), will see the introduction of a new central digital platform for suppliers to register and store their details so that they can be used for multiple bids.
Take a look at the Transforming Public Procurement website for more information.
Images courtesy of ACC Liverpool.