Joined Up for Business Support
A core area of our work is assisting contractors to achieve their Community Benefits targets through simplifying access to projects, partners and local citizens.
Community Benefits (CB’s) are contractual clauses within awarded contracts which focus on maximising the social value for local communities and good causes from public spending.
Targets are aligned to the scale of the contract spend and are now mandatory to consider across all public sector procurement.
Within Edinburgh, the Community Benefits targets from City of Edinburgh Council awarded contracts span several themes:
• Community Engagement
• Education & Outreach
• Employability & Skills
• Sponsorship & Funding
Joined Up for Business support organisations and contractors design and achieve their Community Benefits & Social value commitments, whether the contract is delivered through public sector procurement e.g. the City of Edinburgh Council, NHS or through public/private funding.
A Single Point of Contact
Joined Up for Business provides contractors with a single point of contact (SPOC) to facilitate & simplify connections to key areas of support, providing a platform to easily connect with local employability provision, communities and individuals across the city.
Case Studies
Amey
Amey, street lighting contractor, volunteered to improve LED lighting around Kirkliston Scout Hall. The company also supported Edinburgh School Uniform Bank in addition to completing 8 new parking spaces for nurses at the Marie Curie Hospice.
Balfour Beatty
Between 2018-2022, Balfour Beatty’s North Bridge site team have engaged with 972 young people in schools, colleges and universities to discuss careers in STEM - and given work placements to 8 prison leavers
McAleer & Rushe
McAleer & Rushe
Since starting construction in Leith in 2023, McAleer & Rushe have engaged with local employability organisations to support site visits and created two modern apprenticeships opportunities to date. They have also facilitated a mental health workshop open to all construction workers across the city.
testimonials
Move On Scotland
The work placements with our partners CCG Construction and City Access Scaffolding have been a huge success and an amazing opportunity for the young people, to gain a valuable insight of working on a construction site, with all the of young people's confidence increasing and giving them a flavour of life on site, for many it has cemented their desire to have a career within the sector.
- Move On Edinburgh Team
Community Wealth Building
Community Wealth Building prioritises wellbeing, putting people and planet before profit
Community Wealth Building is an approach to economic activity that prioritises wellbeing, putting people and planet over profit.
Economic activity can be defined as:
- What businesses exist and operate in an area
- The financial investment and power that they bring to the local area
- Other social benefits that they bring to the communities they operate within
This can be done in many different ways – providing resources to local groups, giving volunteer hours to local campaigns, employing or training local people, investing in local businesses, using local suppliers, and bringing resources to the area so that all the profits from their contract do not leak out when they leave.
Community Wealth Building and Community Benefits each provide inward investment for communities. This means that they take the wealth that would usually ‘leak out’ of the area and keep it local.
Therefore, the money that’s made by local businesses and projects stays local – this could be from spending profits at local businesses, investing profits, time, and resources in community projects, and making the local area a more attractive place to do business.
By investing in communities, we can help them to grow into thriving and connected places to live, work, spend and socialise.