A: The Pluggin Marketplace is an interactive, public-facing social equity ecosystem and transactional platform. It is designed to connect public sector buyers, prime contractors, and local small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), micro-businesses, and Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprises (VCSEs).

You are being asked to join because the contracting authority (the "Local Buyer") has mandated that all social value, localization of spend, and community benefits committed under this contract must be transacted, tracked, and verified through Pluggin’s Dual Impact Collaboration Model (DICM) Engine.

A: Across a growing number of contracting authorities, compliance with the Pluggin Marketplace is a contract performance condition. To submit a compliant bid, tenderers must explicitly commit to onboarding as an approved supplier on the Pluggin Marketplace and issuing a Social Purchase Order (SPO) within their bid.

A: Local public buyers hold absolute statutory autonomy under the Procurement Act 2023 and the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 (and the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 where applicable) to define contract performance conditions.

Under the Procurement Act 2023, buyers transition from evaluating the "Most Economically Advantageous Tender" (MEAT) to the "Most Advantageous Tender" (MAT), which permits them to mandate specific, objective verification mechanisms to audit contract delivery. The Pluggin Social Purchase Order (SPO) is a lawful, proportionate, and non-discriminatory contract performance condition connected directly to the subject matter of the contract.

• A: In public procurement law, the Call-Off Autonomy Principle dictates that while a framework agreement sets the administrative rules for procurement, the individual call-off contract is a legally binding agreement solely between the Local Buyer and you, the Supplier.

  The Local Buyer is the sole contracting authority legally responsible for validating social value delivery within its geographic jurisdiction. Therefore, the Local Buyer has the legal right to mandate the Pluggin SPO at the call-off stage, regardless of whether it is an default condition of the broader national framework.

A: No. There is absolutely no charge to any sized business to join and operate within the Pluggin Marketplace, or indeed the whole Pluggin Ecosystem. 

A: Standard supplier portals are static credential databases used for pre-qualification. Pluggin is an active transactional marketplace and auditing engine. It does not replace your pre-qualification portals; rather, it actively facilitates, tracks, and verifies the actual delivery of your contract's local spend and social value commitments in real time during the life of the contract.

A: If you intend to deliver your social value commitments through existing subcontractors, they must register on the Pluggin Marketplace as well. Registration is entirely free for local SMEs, micro-businesses, and VCSEs. 

A: The Pluggin Social Purchase Order (SPO) is a digital, contractually binding procurement commitment issued within the Pluggin Marketplace upon tender bid. Social value represents a specific percentage of the total contract value, and the SPO established a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound commitment to support the impact from one or many pre-approved charities or social enterprises, or SMEs.

The SPO once accepted by the buyer, is locked within the service level agreement of each supply contracts and acts as the data-bound ROI for taxpayers.

A: The DICM Engine is the Pluggin Marketplace's core technology, which operates as a verification ledger that connects, captures, measures, and promotes the localised contribution a supplier makes towards achieving community impact linked to taxpayer spending.

Social value contributed into community organisations within an SPO, you offer support in line with the specified requirements requested by an organisation listed on the Pluggin Marketplace. It can be monetary, or in-kind, or and as time and expertise offered. There is no right or wrong pledge - but businesses stand-out by being innovative with how they will collaborate with the organisation to help sustain the impact being achieved.  

A: No. The SPO is not a tax or an additional fee paid to the contracting authority. It represents a formal SMART resourcing commitment which can be converted and operationalised within an impact collaboration within local community or regional activities. By routing your existing commercial expertise, buying power, up-cycling activities or marketing activity into the SPO you are in-effect building the social value into your business activities through the contract.

A: Verification is strictly community-based.  Instead of self-reporting with proxy-value spreadsheets, the DICM Engine connect-in to community organisations via the SPO and collects outputs; determining when social value specified within the SPO has been delivered - equally collecting the data from the organisation in terms of outputs and impact achieved.

A: Generally, no. Local buyers mandating the Pluggin SPO require localised contributions towards organisations delivering impact, and then proof of delivery from these organisations to ensure public funds are directly benefiting their specific local tax-paying community.

National initiatives (such as a company-wide charitable donation to a national charity) do not meet the localised impact objectives or buyer criteria. The Pluggin SPO acts as a data integrity shield to guarantee that your social value commitments are delivered directly within the buyer’s specified geography.

A: None. SPO delivery confirmations are collected from community beneficiaries, and form part of the qualitative and quantitive data the Pluggin Marketplace generates for buyers and governmental agencies. Example, volunteer hours or direct community donations the charity/social enterprise will input the receipts and the DICM Engine then combines this to record a supplier's delivery against each SPO on each contract.