Publication
Social Considerations
From Office of Government Procurement
Published on
Last updated on
From Office of Government Procurement
Published on
Last updated on
EU law allows Member States the option to take social considerations into account provided the fundamental principles of the Treaties are respected.
While procurement is primarily focused on enabling the delivery of public services in a sustainable manner by ensuring value for money and broad access to public procurement opportunities for businesses, there are also possibilities for public bodies to deliver wider social aims through their procurement processes. This can be achieved through the inclusion of social considerations as requirements throughout the process, from business case and specification stages through to the selection, award and contract management stages.
There are a wide range of policy areas which come under the heading of social considerations which include, but are not limited to:
Circular 20/2019 highlights the possibilities for Departments to deliver wider social as well as environmental aims through public procurement. In this regard, public bodies are encouraged to engage with the OGP to use frameworks which include relevant social and environmental considerations.
The OGP cannot decide for other contracting authorities or at a whole-of-Government level what social considerations should be included in the frameworks and contracts that it puts in place on their behalf. The appropriateness of including social considerations needs to be examined on a contract-by-contract basis and there needs to be sufficient flexibility to allow each individual contracting authority to decide what, how, and when social considerations can be used.
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