How Manchester City Council co-designed its new Social Value Policy 

Manchester City Council has a long history of generating social value that brings meaningful benefits to our local communities, economy, and the environment. We have always gone beyond our legal requirements, and over the years we have updated our social value priorities to meet new challenges in the city – such as responding to covid19 and the climate emergency. 

Last year, we had the opportunity to do a full refresh of our social value policy – revisiting the overall approach and reviewing all of the previous priority areas. To do this, we had internal workshops and held two co-design sessions with external partners.  

The first co-design session was with the local voluntary sector and representatives from community and resident groups. We listened to the sectors feedback about social value work in Manchester, as both a strategic partner, a potential Council supplier, and often as a beneficiary of social value initiatives. We tested some Council assumptions about what the voluntary sector want from social value, and we workshopped new priorities and principles for social value work in Manchester.  

The second co-design group was with current and prospective private-sector suppliers and representatives from membership bodies. We then shared the summaries between the groups for cross-sector review and feedback. 

Both groups had similar view on community priorities (e.g. digital inclusion) and both raised the topics of impact measurement and the need for better brokerage of partnerships and project opportunities. The voluntary sector group emphasised the importance of community assets and aspirations (as well as needs), and the want for bothsystemic and more transactional social value support. The private sector groupdiscussed skills shortages and the difficulty of working across the regionwhere local authorities have different social value expectations. 

We listened carefully to the diverse views of these stakeholders, and their views are directly reflected in the new social value policy. The new policy priorities are structured under five overarching themes: 

The overarching frame of the policy has also been updated: it has been aligned to Manchester’s strategies for inclusive growth and reducing inequalities, the scope has been broadened out from procurement, it directly acknowledges inherent social value, and a section on principles has been added to bring focus on how social value is generated, such as encouraging community led and community owned initiatives. 

The new priorities are interdependent and used as a frame that can be adapted to different contexts. We want organisations to use their own expertise and innovations when designing bespoke social value initiatives for Manchester, and we hope that our partners will get behind the new policy and continue to use social value as an important mechanism to improve the wellbeing of the city.