Supporting the Foundational Economy: Connecting Local Suppliers to Social Housing Providers
Challenge-led innovation has the potential to fundamentally transform social housing within Wales, not just for residents, but for local supply chains who will benefit from increased contracting. Combining this with the broader social impact created by better homes, and more ‘Made in Wales’ suppliers will also benefit the communities around us, creating a prosperous future for Wales
Lee Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, SimplyDo
A consistent challenge for the Foundational Economy in Wales has been a lack of connections between ‘anchor’ institutions and local suppliers.
A challenge-led partnership – funded by Welsh Government – between innovation management company SimplyDo and five social housing providers set out to change this. The goal was to increase access to Made in Wales supply chains, particularly from smaller and harder-to-reach organisations that could also contribute to sustainability objectives.
The Welsh Innovation in Social Housing (WISH) project led to the identification of over 700 local suppliers to meet specific needs in the social housing sector whilst also enabling the modernisation of processes and wider contributions to Net Zero goals.
Here’s how it was done.
Who are SimplyDo, and why are they working with Welsh Government?
SimplyDo’s mission is to bring innovative people together to solve transformational challenges. The Wales-based team offer a proven combination of a state-of-the-art digital product with people-powered innovation that streamlines services and business operations and, crucially, helps organisations solve complex challenges by connecting the right people with the right ideas. As a result, they enhance impact and efficiency.
The Welsh Government has recognised the value of both innovation and collaboration in its work to strengthen the Foundational Economy. This is the part of the economy that supports everyday life, such as housing, care, and food. Policy objectives include supporting more and better jobs with fair working practices, increasing living standards, and growing Wales-based businesses by supporting the public sector and other organisations to increase the use of ‘Made in Wales’ products.
Having run a successful pilot working with a housing association around the Optimised Retrofit Programme, SimplyDo received further Welsh Government support to scale up activity to support five social housing providers.
Project Partners
Caredig Housing – Caredig Housing provides over 2,900 high-quality, affordable homes and provide a range of services to people and communities across Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Neath and Port Talbot, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire.
Caerphilly County Borough Council – The council delivers a wide range of services to almost 180,000 people living in the Caerphilly County Borough including education, environmental services, highways, leisure facilities, planning and social services.
ClwydAlyn – ClwydAlyn was formed in 1978, and is a Registered Social Landlord managing over 6,200 homes in North and Mid-Wales.
Rhondda Housing Association (RHA) – RHA (Wales) is a Housing Association (now called Beacon Cymru) based in Rhondda Cynon Taff. It owns and manages more than 2,100 homes and properties and provide a range of services for over 3,000 people.
Trivallis – Trivallis provides homes to 25,000 people in Rhondda Cynon Taff and Cardiff Bay. Its primary role is delivering homes which are safe, secure and affordable to people who are in greatest need.
Getting Started
The WISH programme started in 2023, working with five social housing providers to solve specific challenges linked with the Foundational Economy. Although these varied amongst the different partners, most related to difficulties in finding and vetting suitable local suppliers due to lack of data, particularly if there were extra characteristics needed, such as specific accreditations or being based in a specific locality. The problems were compounded by lack of time for horizon scanning and exploration of potential solutions.
This experience echoed one of the key findings of Cynnal Cymru’s Foundational Economy Community of Practice – that ‘anchor’ organisations in Wales, such as local authorities and housing associations, struggle to find local suppliers to carry out work for them, and local suppliers can find procurement processes inaccessible and complicated.
The WISH project’s approach to bridging this gap focused on removing barriers on both sides of the procurement relationship.
The first step was to use data analytics to complete a horizon scan for the social housing sector in Wales. This was to help generate both incremental and radical ideas to solve some of the issues appearing over the next 5, 10 and 20 years.
Five challenges were then identified with the project partners. Four of these were procurement-led, focusing on connecting better with existing suppliers and products:
- Caredig Housing required a new automated invoice system to replace inefficient manual processes, but had limited time to horizon scan for a localised solution amongst a global marketplace.
- Caerphilly County Borough Council required Welsh suppliers with capabilities in housing retrofit coordination, assessment, design, and evaluation, to support carbon reduction.
- ClwydAlyn also required retrofit installers within Wales, especially when trying to find suppliers within north Wales.
- RHA Wales required local suppliers and fitters of carpet and sheet vinyl flooring. This was both aimed at increasing their spend with local suppliers, and improving their purchasing impact through their ability to use recyclable and recycled materials.
The challenge from the fifth partner, Trivallis, had a different focus, requiring a supplier that could provide or help design a product to schedule, and prioritise the most critical, of the 56,000 tenant maintenance requests generated per year. Requirements included connecting and combining diverse data sets to identify trends and predictive cycles.
Once the challenges were identified, SimplyDo used their ‘Made in Wales’ AI-powered product to produce a long-list of potential suppliers, and in-house research to rate and shortlist these potential suppliers.
The Results
The project had originally set a goal of engaging 400 suppliers across all the challenges with 5 being shortlisted per challenge.
The actual outcome went far beyond this, with 747 suppliers identified for the four procurement challenges:
- Caredig’s challenge of a new automated invoice system to replace inefficient manual processes resulted in 264 potential businesses being identified, 99 rated as suitable, with 11 applications submitting applications and 5 ultimately shortlisted.
- For Caerphilly County Borough Council’s project, a total of 156 organisations were found, with 66 of these being within specified postcodes. These suppliers are being invited to join Proactis in order to be part of future procurement activity.
- ClwydAlyn’s challenge resulted in a total of 195 organisations being identified, with 64 of these based in north Wales, the area the association most wished to target. These suppliers have been invited to join a new hyper-local procurement micro-framework as part of work with the newly formed Onnen organisations.
- RHA’s challenge resulted in a total of 132 organisations being found, with 88 within the CF/NP postcodes. These suppliers are being engaged in future procurement activity in line with the RHA’s maintenance strategy.
- Trivallis’ challenge-led innovation resulted in the creation of a draft Expression of Interest form for SBRI Centre of Excellence funding.
Capturing the collaborative power of innovation across so many social housing providers was wonderful, and means that we were able to create the broadest possible impact and share learning across those organisations.
John Barker, Associate Director of Innovation, SimplyDo
Contribution to the Foundational Economy Objectives
Through the WISH project, hundreds of local suppliers were identified to meet the needs of the housing associations, building relationships with local and hyper-local businesses that will contribute both towards the Welsh Government’s ambition to increase spend on ‘Made in Wales’ products and services and sustainability objectives,
As one WISH partner identified: “This has provided us with an enhanced pool of suppliers to engage in readiness for procurement activities.”
These local suppliers have now been linked with some of their key local anchor institutions – not just for the lifetime of this project, but as potential partners for longer-term procurements.
The suppliers were also sourced with specific attention to their ability to contribute to Net Zero aims. Two social housing providers were equipped to better deliver retro-fitting services whist RHA created an opportunity for suppliers to explore the greater use of recycled and recyclable materials.
The ClwydAlyn challenge also identified 26 Welsh organisations whose staff could be upskilled to acquire the PAS and MCS accreditations relating to renewable energy systems and installations, supporting a future-ready and highly skilled workforce in Wales.
The Welsh Government has Foundational Economy objectives of helping to achieve Net Zero, promoting environmentally friendly production and consumption, and increasing the use of ‘Made in Wales’ products to build a strong and productive supply chain. The WISH programme has clearly made outstanding contributions to these objectives.
Spreading and Scaling
SimplyDo has identified potential areas to spread and scale the findings from this project.
The learning from this project has led SimplyDo to identify further potential uses of this proven process. This includes potentially focusing on Foundational Economy areas with similar supply chain opportunities. For example, decarbonisation innovation in areas such as public transport and healthcare.
