A NEW plan setting out how Torfaen council spends more than £110 million every year could help support local businesses and improve working conditions. 

That’s what members of the county borough council’s Labour cabinet have been told as they approved a draft socially responsible procurement strategy.  

It will set out how the council buys products and services, through to 2027, and has been designed in partnership with Cardiff County Council, which has also worked on a similar plan with Monmouthshire County Council. 

Torfaen spends more than £110 million every year, with some 2,900 suppliers, buying various products, works and services from food through to new buildings and paying for home help carers. 

The procurement plan is also intended to ensure the council doesn’t just consider the bottom line when buying products but takes into account wider considerations including its plan to be a carbon neutral council by 2030. 

Cabinet member for resources Sue Morgan said: “The temptation might be just to focus on cost and think cheapest is best but we need to realise to think wide is to think clever and we can realise so many benefits and objectives, particularly in difficult times through broad procurement policies.” 

The councillor added: “We know businesses from shops to retail, all across the board, to hospitality, I was just reading this week a number of small hospitality businesses are closing, our local businesses need us and so this strategy has a really important role in supporting them and the third sector who are also squeaking under the strain of financial pressures.” 

The council can also use its spending power to drive up standards, she said: “Contracts give us the opportunity to have influence on how the private sector companies, we need to supply our services, are treating their staff and I think that’s a really important issue, and I would go further to say particularly in social care and is a very important issue for us and gives us some leavers there too.” 

Cardiff council officer Steve Robinson said the strategy had been based on “agreed objectives” across the three councils but they are individually written for each authority. He said: “We didn’t want to just take something from Cardiff and assume that would be the default position.”