Council Sport Provision

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) for securing the debate, and I congratulate her on putting her case so clearly and succinctly. She not only outlined the specific issue of the club in Bristol but gave us a chance to highlight a wider potential problem with how local authorities deal with procurement, which is important for us to note. I will try to touch on both issues.

My hon. Friend set out the case involving the Portway swimming club, which feels that it has been frozen out of opportunities to teach beginners’ swimming lessons at Bristol’s public pools due to the contract that she mentioned. I know that she is an accomplished swimmer herself and feels passionate about sports provision, and I know that her community will appreciate all that she is doing to support the local swimming clubs.

I understand that guidance on who should teach Learn to Swim lessons has been issued by the ASA, and that it is recommended that clubs seek support from their county and regional ASA boards on how the scheme operates locally. The boards will be keen to support the sustainability of their clubs and offer support for the relationships between clubs and operators. In time, that can serve to protect their future membership income.

I understand that my hon. Friend also has more general concerns about how local authorities use their procurement practices to create monopolies of service provision with private providers. My Department holds policy responsibility for local government, including promoting best practice on commissioning and procurement processes and strategies. I would expect any procurement exercise to engage effectively with and examine the impact on community groups and the voluntary sector. Indeed, the best value guidance published in September 2011 set out clearly how councils should work with the voluntary sector when facing difficult funding decisions.

Statutory guidance states that local authorities should actively engage with organisations in the community on the future of a service and any knock-on effect on assets, and allow them to put forward options on how to reshape the service. Good local authorities will therefore work with their local voluntary sector at all stages of service design and delivery, to make best use of their local knowledge and influence.

Overall, local authorities are having to reduce costs and we encourage them to follow the example of leading councils that are taking the opportunity to think creatively, re-design their services, and commission intelligently and co-operatively with all sectors of their local community, not just large private providers. Local areas need the freedom and flexibility to innovate and commission services that best fit the needs of their communities. We cannot, and will not, prescribe from Whitehall how individual local authorities should conduct each procurement exercise, because it is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Neither will we intervene in local issues or specific contracts, which, as I am sure hon. Members will appreciate, is simply not appropriate.

We believe that local authorities can and should use their procurement processes to improve efficiency while also achieving better outcomes for service users. We know that poor practices and long-held myths can slow down the procurement process and lead to bad decisions, costing taxpayers money and affecting the standard of service. Councils such as Bristol must be sure that they are doing everything they can to remove those barriers, in consultation with local providers. I am pleased to hear that the new mayor is going down the road of working with the community, as my hon. Friend outlined. In my meetings with him he has been keen to do that, which is a good sign for Bristol in the future, and probably a real endorsement of how the local accountability of a directly elected mayor can work for a city.

Opening up procurement practices to all local providers can make a massive difference, and councils have a duty to their residents to act now. Councils should publish their tenders and contracts online, which would allow everyone to see clearly the procurement opportunities available and helps councils to get better deals with taxpayers’ money. Contracts Finder is one way of doing that, and as a secure, central and well-recognised website it is already accessed by hundreds of thousands of businesses and organisations. Bristol city council uses an e-procurement portal, Twitter, and a blog to advertise contracts and engagement opportunities. That is a positive step and I encourage more councils to be as open and transparent as possible with all data and procurement decisions.

Myths often surround European Union procurement rules, but those rules apply only once a contracting authority has made a decision to procure goods or services. Such rules are often used or misunderstood to prevent any form of communication, but they do not and should not. Council officers can still work with all sectors and providers prior to the bidding process, and support diversity in the supply chain by skilling-up and improving potential tenders. The Government would always encourage local authorities to procure wherever they can and wherever is appropriate locally. That can create new jobs and sustain existing ones, support the creation of new businesses and clubs, help to tackle worklessness and low skills by supporting apprenticeships, and boost spending locally, as well as help develop and build a community through its clubs and organisations.

Contrary to popular myth, councils can support local growth at the same time as delivering efficiency savings and improving services—those things are not mutually exclusive. Council officers should embrace transparency on spending, tenders, contracts and property assets. That can help clubs and businesses better understand the services being tendered, thereby allowing them an opportunity to submit better proposals.

I would always encourage local authorities to hire the best—not necessarily the biggest—firms, and they should assess organisations on their ability to get the job done for the benefit of the community, rather than on their turnover. Markets can be narrowed, as my hon. Friend outlined, by contracting only with big organisations, because that puts those organisations in control, rather than the council. A diverse supply side promotes competition between suppliers and gives the council and—importantly—its residents, more choice. Breaking up contracts into smaller bite-sized chunks, or sub-contracting, can open up procurement by introducing more competition on price and attracting smaller firms. That can lead to even more local job creation, specialisation and innovation in service delivery.

I appreciate my hon. Friend giving me the chance to outline general aspects of procurement and what councils can do to involve local community organisations and small businesses. However, I want to be clear that localism means doing everything at the most direct possible level, with residents fully involved in making decisions about their areas. Central Government should be involved only when absolutely necessary. The Government’s approach to localism is to pass power down to citizens—greater power to hold local authorities to account and to help them to make a difference in and for their communities. As we have seen recently, local communities hold their councils to account ultimately through their voting power in local elections. In voting for a directly elected mayor, the community in Bristol has hopefully made a decision that will mean Bristol has a better future, with direct, clear local accountability.

The Localism Act 2011 introduced the community right to challenge, which enables communities and the voluntary sector to question how services are provided, to have the ambition to challenge that, and to make plans to take services over. As my hon. Friend will realise, I am unable to comment on the specifics of a contract—as she has said, I have not seen the specific details. Hopefully, I have taken this chance to set out the Government’s approach. I hope I have outlined how local authorities can act to ensure that such situations do not happen. I support her concern. Local authorities should embrace local community groups and the voluntary sector during any procurement process, and in their policy on sports provision and access. I congratulate her on raising the issue in this debate.

Question put and agreed to.