The Progress with Unity Scrutiny Committee met to discuss the council's performance against its key missions and to review its approach to mission-driven procurement. The committee noted the development of mission-driven procurement, which embeds social value across the council and supports the delivery of community wealth building. They also agreed to support and sponsor the Match My Project Platform and the key next steps outlined in the report.

Mission-Driven Procurement

The committee noted the development of Mission-Driven Procurement, which embeds Social Value across the council and supports the delivery of Community Wealth Building. They also agreed to:

• Support and sponsor the Match My Project Platform as outlined in the report, and promote it to members, local businesses and community groups.
• Support and sponsor the key next steps outlined in the report.

Andrea Glasspell, Assistant Director, Community Wealth and Health, presented a report on Mission-Driven Procurement, a key part of delivering Community Wealth Building for Wigan Borough. The report outlined how the council spends public money and who it spends it with, contributing to the achievement of outcomes that can further life chances for residents, and make sure that what the council buys creates an overall positive impact on people and communities, maximising social value along the way.

The council's performance data for 2024 showed that it ranked 44th out of 311 local authorities for spend with local organisations, up 61 places from 2023. It also ranked 50th for Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) spend, and 41st for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) spend.

Ms Glasspell told the committee that the council is working towards the development of a board that brings together the right people across the council, to provide support and positive assurance internally to ensure it maximises its impact.

Mission-Driven Procurement aligns procurement and commissioning with the council's Progress with Unity missions and ensures compliance with the Procurement Act 2023. The council has co-designed with suppliers an important public-facing policy document: Ethical Commissioning, Procurement and Social Value – Building Community Wealth. This document sets out the council's expectations of suppliers it works with, their values and behaviours, and provides a menu of social value expectations for providers to consider when submitting bids.

The council expects suppliers to tailor their commitments to the neighbourhoods and communities they are working in, building on their knowledge of inequalities, challenges, and assets in the borough. They also expect commitments to be proportionate to the contract and supplier size.

To support commissioners and contract managers with the changes and improve quality and consistency in the council's approach to planning ahead for tenders, they have developed an internal Guide to Buying Goods, Works and Services. This outlines the responsibilities all council staff have to ensure that taxpayer money maximises public benefit, as clearly stated by central government, and that it buys the most value for residents.

The guide is split into three sections:

• Things to think about before Buying
• Following the Rules
• Contract Management

The guide has been co-produced between the Programme Office, the Central Procurement Team, Legal Services, Audit, Finance, and Commissioners from Children's Services, Adult Services, Public Health and others. The guide will offer comprehensive support to planning and carrying out effective, best-practice tenders, with the aim of building skills and capacity across the council, especially where commissioning and contracting and external expenditure is a regular feature of the directorates work and formalising our mission-driven approach. Prior to the introduction of the guide, there was no approved guidance for internal staff with regards to buying, or contract management.

The council has also developed some internal tools which directly embed its six key ingredients and ways of working:

• Know This Place
• Listen Deeply
• Do the Right Thing
• See the Person
• Connect to Neighbourhoods
• Show our Love and Pride

The council has developed a Thinking Tool, to be used prior to procurement, to help commissioners think through their requirements, the need that they are addressing, and how it relates back to the council's missions, the best place to source it, the route to market, and how to maximise impact at every step of the way.

The guide and the thinking tool embed the council's approach to social value, supporting commissioners to think about social value expectations at the outset of a tender and build them into the evaluation of the bids. The council will be supporting commissioners to think about what expectations are proportionate to the size and value of the contract, working to the strengths of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise Sector along with maximising contribution and impact on the borough through high value contracts.

To provide a supportive, collective space for contract managers and commissioners to work through issues relating to contract design and delivery, and to provide assurance around the impact and delivery of Community Wealth Building, the council is developing a board, to be chaired by Councillor Nazia Rehman, Portfolio Holder for Finance, Resources and Transformation. The terms of reference for the board outline its role in setting and assuring ambitious targets for spend with local organisations, and for ensuring the council's approach to social value is embedded and measured.

The council is exploring options for a digital means of measuring social value. They have carried out thoughtful work engaging with businesses and other local authorities to explore the social value platform market, to design the right tool for the borough that measures and drives a genuine commitment to the place, residents and communities through authentic contributions.

The Match My Project platform is an innovative online platform designed to streamline the process of posting, matching, and monitoring social value projects. Community organisations can request support in various forms, including time, resources, training, funding, and more. Meanwhile, businesses seeking to fulfil their social value commitments can ensure their contributions are directed where they are needed most - towards impactful, community-led projects.

Launched in Wigan Borough in January 2025, Match My Project has already achieved remarkable results. The platform has fostered strong relationships between businesses and the VCFSE (Voluntary, Community, Faith, and Social Enterprise) sector. To date, there have been 116 successful project matches, encompassing a wide range of activities such as gardening, kitchen refurbishments, cyber security workshops, painting and decorating, window replacements, asbestos removals, and more. The platform features over 179 community organisations and 157 businesses as registered users.

Some examples of successful matches include:

• Golborne Parkside x Sterling Services
• Black Scorpion Karate x Standish Energy
• Wigan and Leigh Hospice x Greenmount
• Platt Bridge Community Centre x Dennis Goulding Ltd

Performance Review

Lewis Greenwood, Assistant Director, Policy and Strategy, presented a report to inform the committee of the current position against a number of key performance indicators developed to measure progress against the two Progress with Unity missions.

The two Progress with Unity missions are:

• Mission 1: Create fair opportunities for all children, families, residents & businesses.
• Mission 2: Make all our towns and neighbourhoods flourish for those who live and work in them.

The report provided an exception report on performance across all council directorates for the year ending 2024/25.

As part of its ongoing commitment to continuous improvement and strategic alignment, the council intends to develop a revised performance framework that better reflects the ambitions of the Unity Plan. Building on the recommendations from the recent LGA Peer Review¹, this revised framework will consolidate traditional performance metrics, such as service standards and organisational health, with more progressive indicators that capture the impact of the two missions: Progress with Unity.