Petition: Concerns re the Tendering of the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme
Deirdre McCarthy and Siân Muldowney of the Dublin Inner City Community Co-operative Society Limited. (formerly Dublin Inner City Community Alliance)
28th January 2015
Presentation to the Joint Committee on Public Service and Oversight and Petitions
Petition: Concerns re the Tendering of the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme
Introduction
First we would like to thank the Committee and the chairperson of the Joint Committee on Public Service and Oversight and Petitions for inviting us to attend to discuss this issue and for your time.
We would also like to thank the Petitions Case Manager Anita Gibbons for her time on this petition.
So, who are we?
The Dublin Inner City Community Co-operative Society Limited.
Originally the Dublin Inner City Community Alliance, the Dublin Inner City Community Co-operative Society Limited was established in November 2014.
We are an alliance of 15 grassroots Dublin inner city community development organisations who have come together to promote, protect and continue the work within our communities.
Since the closure of the Dublin Inner City Partnership in 2010, Dublin’s inner city has been in the anomalous position of being the only region in Ireland to have no local development company. This had contributed to Dublin’s inner city communities becoming increasingly less visible and without a voice when changes are occurring. We formed the Dublin Inner City Community Alliance and then the Co-operative to fill this structural void.
All fifteen groups are currently funded through the Local Community Development Programme and operate in the most disadvantaged areas of the inner city.
As a Co-operative, and purely for your information, we put in a tender as part of the procurement process re SICAP.
For membership of the Co-operative and the types of services and supports provided by Co-operative members please see the back of this document.
The Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP)
SICAP is the successor programme to the Local and Community Development Programme (LCDP) and is due to begin operating from April 2015.
Local Community Development Committees (LCDCs) have been established in local authorities, as a result of Local Government Reform commonly referred to as the Alignment Process. These Local Community Development Committees have a co-ordinating, planning and oversight role of SICAP including monitoring and financial responsibility for the implementation of the programme.
The programme is to be delivered by Programme Implementers who are to be chosen by competitive tender.
For the past 20 years, community organisations have successfully delivered social inclusion programmes, on behalf of the State, on a not for profit basis, without the need for a tendering process.
This is the first time a social inclusion programme has been subject to a public procurement process rather than the traditional grant approach in Ireland. This means that any organisation, or for-profit company, from Ireland, the EU and beyond can bid to deliver SICAP.
The decision to pursue the tendering of the programme implementation raises the real prospect of the privatisation of delivery of social inclusion targets, potentially introducing a profit motivation into this work. To date social inclusion has been delivered by community led non-profit companies, it may now be led by profit seeking, market led companies.
There are further details on the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme at the back of this document, including its aims, goals and target groups.
The Tendering Process
The tender process has taken place over two stages:
· Stage 1: Expression of Interest (July 2014)
· Stage 2: Invitation to Tender (deadline for receipt of applications was 19th December with a decision expected February 18th 2015)
Pobal was nominated as the Administering Body in Stage 1 and will have an oversight function on behalf of the Department Environment Community and Local Government when SICAP is up and running. LCDCs will provide reporting information directly to Pobal who can recommend any necessary actions.
Competitive Tendering and SICAP
It is our contention that the competitive tendering of SICAP (or any social inclusion focused programme) threatens the delivery of services to citizens, we feel it will;
1. Undermine and potentially eradicate community development and local community projects.
2. Result in a deterioration of services for citizens.
3. Is not adhering to the spirit of the EU Directives and the European debate.
We are concerned that the best placed organisations for developing and delivering social inclusion work may not be the best placed at winning tenders. Some may not even be able to make applications via tendering processes due to the restrictions and complexities that apply. Community led organisations will literally be driven out.
State agencies and public authorities are increasingly using competitive tendering approaches in relation to service delivery, often assuming that this approach will automatically deliver the best value for money. It is important to note that that this is not necessarily the case.
When assessing value for money correctly, it is vital to include all of the non-financial value that community led organisations offer, that the community development approach engenders and the genuine value for money community led groups have offered for many years. Community led groups do not make a profit for share holders, their aim is to provide services and supports to their communities.
Impact on Community Development and Local Community Projects
It is our contention that is it not good public policy to put social inclusion programmes out to public tender as these are services are for the public benefit and not for private profit, and that tendering processes disempower local community led organisations and structures.
Our expertise is that we are community workers, we are not legal experts, but we contend that putting SICAP and other social inclusion programmes out to tender will impact negatively on community development and community led projects and ultimately citizens.
Outlined below are some specific concerns with tendering as an approach in relation to social inclusion programmes.
Tendering processes;
• Are complex and often benefit larger organisations and potentially advantage private sector operators; this is due to the often large scale nature of contracts awarded and the fact that tenders may be required to fund cash flow to a much greater extent than under grant based services. Community led organisations can often not meet those criteria and can therefore be excluded from even participating in the competitive tender before it starts.
• Can destabilise existing community responses and creates uncertainty. [1]
• There are risks to partnerships, established relationships and shared understandings built up over years between commissioners/funders and the community sector.
• Can create an unnecessarily and unhelpfully stark division between commissions and providers- when both ought to be concerned to achieve the same outcomes based on shared understandings.
• Divert energy and resources from both sides from a collaborative focus on delivering outcomes, to a divisive focus on whether targets were achieved (often too narrowly defined).
• Work against the development of long-term relationships
• Are more inflexible and subject to litigation
• Do not accommodate/value/recognise added/in kind value of community based approaches.
• Are short term in focus
• Do not develop, and indeed may erode, social capital and do not support capacity building in communities.
• Evidence suggests that while contracting arrangements and performance management systems have become more outcomes focused, these outcomes become narrower, more bureaucratic, less flexible and innovative.
It is important that not-for profit organisations who not only provide services but also make a wider social and economic contribution within their communities, including in some cases, through an advocacy role, should be protected and supported rather than undermined by the procurement process. For example those supporting marginalised groups such as Travellers, lone parents or those who are long-term unemployed are increasingly subject to a competitive tendering processes, and treated as ‘services’ when previously they were recognised as initiatives developed from and by community organisations and supported by contributions from the State.[2]
Community development is built on a bottom-up approach which brings people together. Competitive tendering, which by its nature is based on competition, not collective action, goes against the basic principles of community development.
A deterioration of services particularly for the most disadvantaged.
Winning a tender does not necessarily make an organisation/structure the best option for developing anti poverty and social inclusion services. It means an organisation is very good at developing tenders.
It is often community led organisations who have developed responses to the needs of disadvantaged communities, raised their issues and concerns and advocated for responses to these issues and concerns in partnership with the communities themselves. This critical and central aspect of social inclusion will be lost if it led by private, for profit companies.
We are concerned that if this continues disadvantaged communities will pay, with further exclusion and reduced service provision.
The approach of community led projects and the sector in general, which seeks to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged in our society will be lost, if the methods that are used are not employed and the community led organisations who drive these methods are not centrally involved.
These are methods of operation and simply do not exist in the private or public sectors.
Methods that include:[3]:
· Responsive services tailored to individual need through a person centred approach
· Innovation in service design, delivery and funding
· Flexibility in approach
· Rapidity in responding to new and emergent needs
· A value for money focus (driven by a constant need to manage scarce resources in the face of unmet need)
· Involvement of users/beneficiaries in design and control (and often on boards)
· Commitment of value driven personnel who choose to work in the sector
· Empowerment (and associated well being benefits) of people and communities involved
· Leadership and governance provided by volunteer trustees motivated solely to deliver the highest quality outcomes to meet people’s needs.
As well as an ethos which includes a commitment to social justice, equality, tackling exclusion and empowerment.
Unless work in the most disadvantaged communities is underpinned by these approaches and this ethos, the most disadvantaged will lose out.
EU Directives and the European debate
There has been an extensive debate at EU level that social services should be kept out of public procurement, a debate that was largely won, supporting the view that it is not appropriate to have social services put out to private tender.
The Council of Ministers of the European Union adopted three new Directives on Procurement in February 2014. Transposition of the Directives into national law is required by April 2016. The Directives permit member states a high degree of latitude in how they are transposed into domestic law. [4]
· Public Procurement: Directive 2014/24/EU on public procurement, which repeals Directive 2004/18/EC
· Utilities: Directive 2014/25/EU on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors, which repeals Directive 2004/17/EC
· Concessions: Directive 2014/23/EU on the award of Concession Contracts, which does not directly replace any previous Directive.
For example
Directive 2014/24/EU
Requires member states to (article 76) 'comply with the principles of transparency and equal treatment of economic operators. Member states shall ensure that contracting authorities may take into account the need to ensure quality, continuity, accessibility, affordability, availability and comprehensiveness of the services, the specific needs of different categories of users, including disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, the involvement and empowerment of users and innovation'.
Our Experience
We are part of a Cooperative of small community groups who came together to submit a tender, therefore, we have direct experience of this process, but are also included in a wider network of community organisations and are aware of the wider experience.
Due to the fact that the tender process is still underway, we can only talk in general terms about our experience.
In our experience;
· Small organisations which are not local development companies struggled to meet the meet the pass/ fail requirements in Stage 1. As a result many valuable community groups were not able to get involved in Stage 2. Due to criteria such as financial and human resources and turn over. For example in Dublin an applicant had to have a turnover of /in excess of between 1.25 million and 1.5 million euros to pass the requirements to enter into Stage 2.
· There was a very short timeframe to complete the material required and/ or develop partnerships. For small community led organisations partnerships would invariably be needed to be meet the criteria required to apply to tender.
· Inevitably in completing a tender you tailor your work to meet the needs of the tender which were not necessarily developed with the needs of the community you work with in mind, as they were not involved in developing the criteria. For example in SICAP there is no reference to homelessness despite this being a significant issue in many of the communities where we are working and an identified need of projects.
· The whole process causes stress to the organisations and the communities that they service, organisations cannot plan long or even medium term and cannot confirm with the service users if a service will be available in six months time. This is detrimental to good planning, where there is a short term timeline.
· Traveller groups, women groups and the Islands projects, among others, all require difference approaches as the new structures simple do not fit.
· The process was time consuming and placed a heavy burden on community organisations who were simultaneously trying to deliver services.
The whole process is very administratively heavy, at a time when we are all being told to minimise time and budgets spent on administration.
Social Inclusion Programmes: It doesn’t have to be this way.
Under EU rules there are a range of services which public bodies are under no legal obligation to put out to tender, services which are of social benefit are within this range. Therefore, there is not necessarily a legal requirement to put programmes like SICAP out to tender.