Spend
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Buy locally and to benefit our city.
The aim of Spend 4 Plymouth is to keep the pounds in Plymouth wherever possible and maximise the wider benefits of spending to the city’s economy, society and environment.
We recognise that for our local businesses to thrive in a competitive business environment, they need a diverse range of clients. With Plymouth’s peripheral location, it can be difficult to build the networks to enter new markets and new supply chains.
By buying local, we circulate money around the local economy as much as possible. In addition, we can increase benefits to local people by requiring our suppliers to apply the principles of the Plymouth Charter themselves.
This is about optimising the benefits of the money that flows through our local economy.
£4.99bn GDP value of Plymouth's economy
£1.7bn annual budgets of our anchor institutions
60% with local suppliers in the first 6 months of the 20/21 financial year
What you can do
Join the Plymouth Supplier Directory as a supplier so that businesses looking for local goods, services and works, can find you and you can find other local suppliers to connect with too.
Use the Plymouth Supplier Directory as a buyer to find local suppliers for your own business needs.
Pay Businesses promptly – in less than 30 days for businesses below 50 employees. Signing the government’s Prompt Payment Code further demonstrates commitment to the pledge
Take the commitment to ‘Buy Local’ one-step further by signing up to the Plymouth Charter where you will be offered the opportunity to have a Buyer Page on the Directory. By having a Buyer profile page you are publicly demonstrating your commitment to use the Directory to buy local wherever possible and also helping local suppliers understand how to do business with your organisation.
Adopt a social value policy / social return on investment framework and incorporate into your wider procurement and planning processes. See how the Council approaches social value as an example.
Request the delivery of one or more of the Plymouth Charter Commitments in the delivery of goods, services or works.
How we'll support businesses
We are working with our local anchor institutions – the large Plymouth-centred businesses such as the council, health service and education providers - to increase local spend and social value procurement.
We have launched the Plymouth Supplier Directory as a one-stop shop for finding local suppliers for goods, services or works for your business needs.
Plymouth Online Directory provides a one-stop shop for consumers to access local services from the voluntary and community sector such as wellbeing, health and care and childcare.
We are promoting the adoption of Social Value policies / social return on investment frameworks and the use of Social Value procurement tools such as the Social Value Portal’s National TOMs (Themes, Outcomes and Measures) framework to make it easier to understand and measure the social impact of contracts and projects.
Local Spend and Procurement Toolkits
Measure your progress
There are various measures that you could use to track your ‘Spend 4 Plymouth’ progress, such as:
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The creation and implementation of a buy local policy (or similar)
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The creation and implementation of a social value policy/social return on investment framework (or similar)
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Monitoring and increasing the percentage of your total expenditure that is spent with PL postcode suppliers
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Monitoring and increasing the percentage of your procurements where the impact of environmental, economic and social factors have been considered alongside price and quality prior to issue
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Monitoring and increasing the value of economic, social and environmental benefits generated through procurements
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Monitoring and increasing the percentage of your contracts that include commitments to ethical/sustainable procurement e.g. abolition of modern slavery, reducing CO2 emissions etc