11 March 2009 – QEII Conference Centre, London

Progressing the Agenda

Sustainable procurement should not be sidelined during the financial crisis.That was the message from the GO National Sustainable Procurement Conference and Exhibition, reports GO Features Editor Morven MacNeil.

With billions of pounds of spending power, the UK public sector has a unique role to play in addressing and influencing the sustainability agenda. While sustainability may have environmental concerns at its core, it actually goes beyond ‘green’ matters to encompass areas such as corporate social responsibility, ethical purchasing and a myriad social issues. As the purchaser of virtually every product and service imaginable, the public sector is perfectly positioned to make a real and long-lasting social and environmental difference, and to set an example for other organisations and individuals to follow.

Delegates at the Government Opportunities (GO) magazine National Sustainable Procurement Conference and Exhibition – Progressing the Agenda – held at the QEII Conference Centre in London on 11 March, were left in no doubt as to the responsibilities of both buyers and suppliers. The conference, organised by BiP Solutions and supported by an array of environmentally focused organisations, delivered some hard-hitting messages – but also some encouragement and updates on progress.

Speakers included William Jordan, Chief Sustainability and Operating Officer, Office of Government Commerce (OGC); Lucy Siegle, Broadcaster; Caroline Booth, Group Procurement Director, Lloyds Banking Group; Tom Carnac, Head of Public Sector, Carbon Disclosure Project Mel Jones, Contract Development Manager, Exeter City Council; and Leo Trinick, Project Coordinator, Sustainable Business Forum.

Opening the conference, Chair and GO Managing Editor Grahame Steed urged delegates not to forget about the sustainability agenda during the current economic downturn. Instead, Mr Steed highlighted the advantages of implementing sustainable practices to help ease financial constraints.

He said: “In these recessionary times, where increasing focus is being placed on efficiency, there is a danger that the sustainability agenda could be overshadowed and set back by short-term cost-cutting measures.

“In fact, there is an opportunity to do the opposite. Fixing on the long-term benefits of adopting a sustainable approach to procurement should be considered a priority, since this will benefit not only the environment but also an increasingly stretched public purse. Surely it makes sense to use sustainability to address questions of efficiency and effectiveness, rather than cutting into the marrow of essential public services.”

William Jordan, Chief Sustainability and Operating Officer at the OGC, explained why his post and the Centre of Expertise in Sustainable Procurement (CESP) was established in 2008. Mr Jordan said: “There was an acknowledgement and realisation that we needed to raise our game in relation to sustainable government operations. The Sustainable Development Commission report which was published in 2008 was quite critical of government’s performance, and my post was created in response to this.

“The CESP and I are here to realise government’s ambition of becoming an exemplar of best practice, to learn from the private sector and to push forward the boundaries of what’s achievable. We aim to establish government as a leader in this field, but we also need to restore government’s credibility – that it can deliver what it says.”

June 2008 saw the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum, part of Policy Connect, launch the report Costing the Future: Securing Value for Money through Sustainable Procurement. The report provided a ‘health check’ of the Government’s progress in fulfilling its express intention to embed sustainability within procurement. Leo Trinick, Project Coordinator at the Sustainable Business Forum and author of the report, gave delegates an overview of its key findings and recommendations.

Mr Trinick stressed: “One of the major points of our report is that you have to view sustainability as a triadic relationship between environmental, economic and social sustainability. In ignoring the economic and the social parts, you don’t just spoil your ability to address those, you also act detrimentally to your ability to address environmental sustainability.

“Local government has an advantage in all of this, as it is well placed to respond to its constituents. However, local authorities should collaborate both in terms of sharing knowledge and in terms of influencing the market. An individual authority often won’t have that much scope to influence the market, but through collaborating with other authorities in their area they can really increase that influence.”

Moving on to the report’s key findings with regards to central government, Mr Trinick added: “I think the OGC is definitely starting to move in the right direction. It’s important to recognise with sustainable procurement that you can’t measure what success will look like; the whole point of it is essentially innovating and coming up with new ideas.”

Lucy Siegle, broadcaster and reporter on BBC1's The One Show, spoke in depth about ethics and innovation in sustainability. She said: “Innovation and ingenuity are at the heart and an undisputable part of the human spirit. Innovation is something we have in absolute abundance and I think it will be key to getting us out of these very sticky financial situations.”

Closing the conference, Mr Steed concluded: “Public procurement has a fantastically powerful role to play in ensuring that we not only maximise the benefit of every pound spent in order to conserve funds, but also preserve and repair the environment for those who will bear the burden of taxation in the future.”