Council wins green procurement award, again!

11 November 2024

Work to cut Powys County Council's carbon footprint by helping its suppliers to cut theirs, has been rewarded with a national award - for a second year in a row.

The council's Procurement and Commercial Services Team won the Best Net Zero Initiative category at last week's GO (Government Opportunities) Awards Wales, after picking up the Sustainable Procurement award at the same event 12 months ago.

It won this year's accolade for its work to create a Supply Chain Sustainability Portal to help social care businesses cut their carbon emissions and improve their managers' carbon knowledge.

The portal asks questions to assess each organisation's decarbonisation progress and then, with the help of generative AI, creates a bespoke plan for further action, set out in five key steps.

The social care businesses acting on the suggestions can then cut their carbon footprint and improve their competitiveness when tendering for public sector contracts.

"Nearly three-quarters of our carbon emissions come from our supply chain so, it is a key area to drive down, with a large amount of this spend (around a third) going on social care," said Councillor David Thomas, Powys County Council's Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Transformation.

"I congratulate the Powys staff in our Digital, Adult Social Care and, Procurement and Commercial Services, who worked on the Supply Chain Sustainability Portal. I would also like to thank Welsh Government for funding the work through a Health and Social Care Climate Emergency Grant."

Cllr Sian Cox, Cabinet Member for a Caring Powys added: "Social care has a very big carbon footprint and it's a big area of spend within the council. We have a duty but also a moral obligation to be at the forefront of the effort to decarbonise, and that includes the agencies we commission and purchase from.

"Our Adult Social Care Commissioning Team worked with suppliers to understand the barriers to decarbonisation for them, and the web app was designed to help overcome those barriers. It's a leading piece of work that the team can be very proud of."

The sustainability portal is currently being developed so, it can also be used by all businesses within the council's supply chain, with the highways, transport and recycling sectors the next to benefit.

This work is being carried out as part of the council's Climate and Nature transformation programme, which aims to help it reach Net Zero for carbon emissions by 2030 and for 30 per cent of the county's land and water to be protected and positively managed for nature by the same date.

The GO Awards celebrate the procurement achievements of Wales's public sector organisations: https://wales.goawards.co.uk/

PICTURE: Wayne Welsby, Grant Thomas and Christian Ikechi Obua from the council's Procurement and Commercial Services collecting the Best Net Zero Initiative award.