The West Midlands Procurement Framework for Jobs and Skills was launched in March 2010 and was developed by the West Midlands Economic Inclusion Panel to enable public, private and voluntary / community sector organisations to increase access to jobs and skills opportunities for local people through procurement.

The Framework aims to achieve the above by:

·         Making access to jobs and skills a core requirement of procurement exercises

·         Addressing the real and perceived legal barriers to the use of jobs and skills clauses in procurement

·         Providing advice and guidance to help embed a focus on jobs and skills throughout the end-to-end procurement process – from setting strategic priorities to contract implementation and monitoring

·         Sign-posting procurers and prospective contractors to the range of support and advice that can help both parties deliver on the jobs and skills requirements to be delivered

The rationale for harnessing Public Sector buying power is the assumption that 2-4 jobs are secured per £1 million of procurement and it is estimated that approximately £16 billion of spending is procured annually by the public sector in the West Midlands.

The Framework was re-published in March 2011 to provide the following:

·         A fully revised Guide and Toolkit

·         Further assurance that applying the Framework is wholly consistent with the latest developments in EU Procurement Law

·         More ‘real time’ case studies showing how other public sector bodies have deployed the Framework’s approach to procuring jobs and skills outcomes

·         Better signposting in the Guide to relevant tools, templates and case studies within the toolkit

·         More examples of the barriers to, and the benefits of, deploying the Framework

·         An opportunity for peer-to-peer sharing of lessons learned

The 2011 Edition of the Framework is available here: Main Guide, Summary Guide, Toolkit.