Blog Articles

Social Platform’s guide “Public Procurement for Social Progress” is now available in German on our website!

In previous weeks I have blogged about the use of social clauses in public procurement procedures as a way to foster social inclusion and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities and disadvanatged persons (view my blogs of 22 and 27 October).

Today I would like to spend some time focusing on the rules set by the Public Procurement Directive concerning public contracts for social and health services. This Directive has the merit to recognise that social, health and other services provided directly to the person have objectives, types of users and characteristics different to other services. In fact these services contribute to social cohesion and inclusion, promote the enjoyment of human rights, and they address everybody who might need them at a certain stage of life – particularly those in need. As opposed to other “network” services of general or public interest (such as water supply), they are not provided by a normal supplier/costumer relationship; rather, they are supplied by an “asymmetric” one due to the vulnerability of the service user and the personal nature of the service.

The Directive puts an increased emphasis on quality rather than price in the criteria used by contracting authorities to award these contracts. First of all, in the transposition phase Member States can decide that these services should be awarded only on the basis of the Best Price-Quality Ratio (BPQR) instead of the lowest price or cost. In this way, if well transposed, the Directive could bring to an end the trend of awarding contracts mainly on the basis of the lowest price.; this has had a detrimental effect both on the quality of the service and the working conditions of the workforce.

However, to ensure that quality becomes an essential component in the awarding of these contracts, quality should be given a weight of at least 50% compared to other criteria such as price (value for money).

One example of a good practice comes from the city of Edinburgh that in 2011 used 70% quality criteria (and 30% price) in the tendering of services for homeless people. Where possible, the city of Edinburgh seeks to ensure that quality has the higher weighting.

Alongside quality, the Directive makes reference to other key principles that should be respected while procuring social and health services: continuity, accessibility, affordability, availability and comprehensiveness of services; the specific needs of different categories of users, and their involvement and empowerment; and innovation. These principles were set and well explained by the Voluntary European Quality Framework for social services, published by the Social Protection Committee.

As additional resources, our guide refers to some toolkits developed by our members that can be useful while designing tendering procedures. For example, the toolkits developed by the European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) on participation of users in the design, implementation and evaluation of services; and the EQUASS Assurance tool, developed by our member the European Platform for Rehabilitation (EPR), that implements the European Quality Framework for social services.