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Welcome to the NAG and SOPO newsletter for 24 July 2020. Feel free to circulate to your colleagues.
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Personal protective equipment
The guidance for PPE use in care homes and domiciliary care was updated. The updates include the new recommendations (July 2020) for the use of face masks and coverings in care homes to prevent COVID-19 transmission as follows. Additional questions and answers have been added including adapting advice provided by NHS England for hospital settings to this context and updates to some existing questions and answers have been made.
Free school meals
The guidance for schools and councils on free school meals arrangements during the outbreak has been updated. This now reflects the increase in the income threshold from £16,190 a year to £31,500 a year for London and £28,200 for areas outside of London.
Children’s social services
With many councils experiencing a rise in demand for children’s social services in recent months, you may be interested in our offer of support to help you hire experienced social workers without the cost of agency fees. Over 90 councils have signed up to our Social Work Together campaign and have been given access to a free online search tool, which they can use to connect with social workers ready to return to work in their areas. We developed this free tool in collaboration with Social Work England and central government, to help you recruit social workers whilst redirecting the costs of agency fees to other key areas.
Visiting Care Homes during Coronavirus
This DHSC guidance is for councils, care providers and others who’ll be involved in planning to enable visits to care homes. It sets out:
- the principles of a local approach to visiting arrangements and dynamic risk assessment
- guidance for providers establishing their visiting policy
- guidance for providers taking decisions on visiting for particular residents or groups of residents
- infection control precautions
- communicating with relatives and others about the visiting policy and visiting decisions
National Covid-19 social care provider group
The provider group discussed workforce health and wellbeing issues. It was agreed more work required on workforce access to occupational health schemes. Concerns were raised regarding winter pressures and flu vaccines for the workforce, agreed that clear guidance was needed for social care staff trying to access the vaccine. The issue of testing was also discussed, and concerns were raised around how the weekly staff testing is being used alongside the outbreak testing data. The second tranche of the infection control funding is due to councils shortly.
Conducting pre-tender market engagement virtually
Most public sector organisations and suppliers are now working remotely in response to COVID-19 - something that could remain the case for some time. When you're running a procurement, this means that any pre-tender market engagement exercises you do to gain valuable feedback from suppliers are more likely to have to be hosted virtually. If this is something you are unfamiliar with doing, or if you’re looking for some tips and tricks to improve your process, read CCS' procurement experts' advice.
Business support
BEIS have written to chief executives of billing authorities notifying them of his decision that the Small Business Grants Fund, the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants Fund and the Discretionary Grants Fund should close by Friday 28 August.
The letter notes that local authorities have now made £10.76 billion grant payments to over 875,000 hereditaments, which equates to over 92 per cent of those identified as in scope for the first two schemes. It also states that, once the final payments have been made on all schemes, it will be necessary for local authorities to return any unspent funds to BEIS.
The LGA has already heard from some councils who are concerned that the deadline of 28 August will not allow sufficient time for the remaining grant to be paid out, particularly on the Discretionary Grants Fund. We would be interested in hearing from councils on how widespread this concern is so we can discuss this with BEIS and MHCLG officials; please contact lgfinance@local.gov.uk.
Opening up
Cleaning
Public Health England has updated the guidance outlining the principles of cleaning and disinfection in non-healthcare settings outside of the home. This include a new section covering laundry, kitchens and communal canteens, bathrooms and waste.
Leisure
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Select Committee has published its report on the impact of coronavirus on culture and sport. The report echoed our long-standing calls to provide funding for council-run leisure facilities and recommended providing funding by August. Our response encouraged Government to consider these recommendations urgently.
We are aware that many leisure services will not be in a position to reopen on 25 July and been undertaking social media work to help members of the public understand why this might be the case.
As part of our lobbying work and support for the #SaveLeisure campaign, we have issued a press release warning that losing leisure centres due to a lack of funding would remove a critical tool in the fight against obesity.
Non-COVID stories
BIP Solutions/GO Awards
Congratulations to all the winners and highly commended organisations for last week’s GO Awards. Local Government had a really good representation and no less than three National Advisory Group (NAG) members within the finalists. Particular congratulations go to the procurement teams at Southwark, Kirklees, Oxfordshire, NEPO and London Luton Airport for their wins and Wigan, North Yorkshire and Oldham for highly commended awards - Click here to view this year’s award winners
CBI - Valued partnerships: embedding social value in public contracts
This week, the CBI published its new report, Valued Partnerships, which explores the use of social value in contracts between the public sector and private suppliers across the UK. The report argues that the piecemeal approach to social value so far has resulted in a confusing landscape for businesses and contracting authorities, and that clarity is needed to ensure the positive impacts of social value for communities and local economies are not lost because of this confusion.
It lays out a number of key recommendations to strengthen the role of social value in procurements and delivery, and make it more efficient and effective for businesses and public sector commissioners to work together to deliver billions of pounds worth of social impact each year.
Building safety
The Government has published its Draft Building Safety Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny and launched a consultation on strengthening the Fire Safety Order. The LGA has advised the Government on both, prior to their publication, and we welcome them as important steps in fixing the broken building safety system in England. Nevertheless, there are details on which we will continue to lobby to ensure the measures provide an effective building safety system. We are particularly concerned at the potential cost to leaseholders of some measures, the detailed relationship between the Building Safety Regulator, councils and fire authorities and the lack of skills in the UK to deliver the new requirements.
Webinars / e-learning
LGA Webinar: Reset, not restart: shaping the future of social care in light of COVID-19 - Monday 27 July
SVP Webinar - Climate Emergency: A Green and Fair COVID Recovery – 30 July
WIG Outsourcing Playbook version 2.0 Webinar - 30 July
PASS COVID-19: Latest Guidance on Competitive Dialogue and Competitive Procedure - 30 July
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