Developing a new ‘commons sense’ for council procurement and commissioning

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‘Procurement and spend’ is one of the central pillars of any council-led community wealth building (CWB) strategy, and is often discussed as a key lever in bringing about transformative change in the economy. Often this is done through policies and processes which seek to test and account for additional ‘social value’ in procurement decisions. However, the experience of many councils working in this area is that this agenda is not yet fulfilling its transformative potential. We’ve been exploring why this is the case and what councils might do about it through a Cooperative Councils’ Innovation Network funded Policy Lab to develop a Social Value Toolkit for co-operative councils. 

Re-convivialising Social Value

In Tools for Conviviality (1973), social critic Ivan Illich makes a useful distinction in the way that tools can be used: 

“[Tools] can be used in at least two opposite ways. The first leads to specialization of functions, institutionalization of values and centralization of power, and turns people into accessories of bureaucracies or machines. The second enlarges the range of each person’s competence, control, initiative.” 

The first has an inbuilt tendency to generate more of the problem it was designed to solve, creating an ever-expanding dependency which Illich calls a ‘radical monopoly’. The second creates the generative conditions for engaging people’s innate capacities and desires to contribute to human flourishing, which Illich called ‘tools for conviviality’. In researching social value policies and the use of social value measurement frameworks in local government, we found that often local government finds itself stuck in a ‘radical monopoly’ of social value practice. 

Rather than meeting its original intention to encourage public authorities to assess value more holistically, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 has been absorbed into an organisational logic serving to preserve the status quo, and distract or disadvantage those suppliers, especially smaller enterprises, who are genuinely committed to wider public/social value objectives. 

The Social Value Toolkit attempts to reclaim social value from this radical monopoly and present the commissioning cycle as a convivial tool, reminding local authorities of the power they already have to deliberatively discern the qualities that lead to productive relationships and flourishing places and to put in place assessments and governance which will more effectively work to those ends.

Around the world, people, governments and labour movements are finding ways to provide energy that is affordable, democratic, and sustainable, showing that solutions to the climate crisis can not only help to meet basic needs but to improve people’s lives. The Labour government’s 2024 manifesto outlined plans for an ambitious new ‘publicly-owned company’, Great British (GB) Energy. Plans were reiterated in the King’s Speech where it was stated that GB Energy would create energy projects ‘owned by and for British people’, highlighting an understanding that the British public should start to benefit from energy projects, especially new renewables – the majority of which are publicly owned but by foreign states. 

GB Energy’s aims are rolling out the ‘energy transition’ and reducing energy bills, through a mixture of approaches including providing investment through local authorities, and creating new jobs, and supporting community energy projects – now explicitly referenced in the Bill following sustained advocacy from Power for People and a cross-party group of MPs and Peers. However, many of the plans are yet to be formalised with some fearing that it will become an investment mechanism for private participation in the energy transition and fail to deliver on measures that could systematically redistribute the benefits (such as profits) to the public. Alongside these fears, it has been reported that the government may seek to reduce GB Energy’s budget, diminishing the impact that the project can make, bolstering concerns that if GB Energy fails to deliver on its promises, public support for the energy transition may dwindle. 

So, why is energy so important?

The problem

In 2024, researchers around the world found that the planet had surpassed the 1.5 degrees of warming that signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement had aimed to prevent. Flooding, coastal erosion, wildfires, crop failures, and many more impacts have been felt by communities everywhere, with citizens left wondering what can and, more importantly, will be done to protect future and current generations from the worst harms of further global warming. The energy transition has long been understood as an essential component for tackling climate change. For decades, governments have been focusing on policy that leverages the private sector to invest, develop new infrastructure, and ultimately lead the way towards decarbonisation. Yet here we are, decades later; renewables are cheaper but fossil fuel usage is higher than ever before and renewable energy transitions are stagnating. All the while tariffs are becoming increasingly unaffordable whilst energy companies continue to make huge profits. 

Why is this happening? At the Transnational Institute (TNI) our years of research into electricity policy has found that the common logic underpinning a lot of energy policy is flawed. The core strategy has been to try to make the market more favourable for private investment in renewables. This has largely meant underwriting private profits, with guaranteed fixed returns or public subsidies. This model pours public funds into private purses, and once the subsidies dry up, so does the investment. In the meantime, public capacity and skills have been drained. In fact, relying so heavily on the private sector has stalled the transition. As our ‘Green’ Multinationals report found, in some cases some of the largest so-called green energy companies are actively working against climate-friendly policy.  

‍The solutions

We need to speed up the transition to renewables whilst also ensuring energy tariffs remain affordable. So, what can be done? Nine out of ten countries leading the transition to renewables have a publicly owned renewable energy company that drives the process. And moreover, prices have shown to be 20-30% lower in systems with public ownership. As we argue in our recent report, Reclaiming Energy, we need system-wide public ownership. This means a state-coordinated energy system that is a mixture of state, community, and local authority ownership, to ensure accountability and democracy. This would mean local people can decide whether to spend profits from their local energy projects for improving homes or funding a nursery; and that state profits could go into upgrading energy infrastructure and keeping bills affordable. 

 Public ownership is not a silver bullet; there are many cases where public companies do not act in ways to reduce climate change. Some of the fastest growing fossil fuel giants, such as Aramco in Saudi Arabia, are state-owned and play an active role in stalling international climate action. There are also cases where public systems have experienced some form of marketisation (or corporatisation), meaning that decisions are still made to benefit company or shareholder profits – as was the case in Austria during the recent energy crisis, where shareholders decided to increase tariffs significantly despite being a publicly owned system. This was fiercely contested by local groups and campaigns such as Attak Austria, yet so far few amendments have been made to the overall system. 

Over the last 18 months, Stir to Action’s Centre for Democratic Business has been working with a range of organisations and individuals who are concerned about, or part of, revitalising the future of Britain’s social clubs. 

Though the number of clubs and total membership has collapsed over the last generation from its peak of 4,000 clubs and four million members in the 1970s, there are still around 1,800 clubs in Britain, providing space for community connection through sports and recreation, culture and the arts, and vital local services.  

These social clubs embody the history of working people’s struggle to decide for themselves how they want to associate, socialise, organise, and build community, often in the face of suspicious authorities or paternalistic reformers. As non-transactional spaces where members can govern their own spaces outside of the public or private sector, they are more relevant than ever.

Today, the nation’s clubs present a mixed picture. Many have closed their doors, while others are underused, or converting to new uses and ownership. Some survive mainly by leasing space to other groups, serving as community assets beyond their use by members. In many cases, there is social conflict over their futures, and, more rarely, there are examples of revitalisation. 

Within the context of a weak civil society – particularly the alarming decline of the nation’s social infrastructure – we asked MPs, civil society groups, trade unions, community organisers, and legal professionals about why we need to save and revitalise social clubs.

This is the second in a series of conversations between Stir to Action and representatives from philanthropic foundations about their role in democratising wealth in the UK. Stir to Action’s Daniel Stanley speaks to Eli Manderson Evans, CEO of The Blagrave Trust, a national youth funder with a focus on seed funding and incubating young changemakers and youth delivery organisations across England. 

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Daniel: What do you see as the current trends or mood in the philanthropy sector, and how have these affected your work and your thinking? 

Eli: The sector is so big and, although there are clusters that work well together, it isn't always very well connected. I’d also say that the origins and distribution of wealth in the wider sector are not always transparent. There’s an assumption that money in this sector is on the left wing, but that’s not always the case in the UK – in my time at Ten Years’ Time I worked with really varied clients, which gave me an insight into where the majority of money is held.

One positive trend I’ve seen is a move towards participatory grantmaking. It’s an interesting model that in some cases works really well, but which I think also at times speaks to the discomfort around power in philanthropy and where people might seek to navigate that. At Blagrave, we see real power in devolving decision making to and providing opportunities for folks with more proximity to the issue areas they seek to address to make decisions on money. I don’t think we can escape discomfort in philanthropy – we're making decisions on accumulated wealth that wouldn’t exist if we lived in a more equitable, caring world, and I do think it's important that we don't try to escape our responsibilities with it.