Gwent Police, along with South Wales Police, has adopted the Pluggin civic infrastructure to help all suppliers turn social value commitments into practical, visible and measurable public benefit across Gwent.
Leeanne Hussellbee, Gwent Police's Funding and Partnerships Lead says: "The marketplace provides a transparent route for suppliers to service contracts with social value which offers our listed community providers with: goods, services, equipment, expertise, staff time, logistics, storage, training, mentoring, innovation and other practical support as much needed and targeted resources which contribute to building safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities."
Gwent Police is one of 19 forces within England & Wales to utilise Pluggin's community embedded civic infrastructure in support of driving social value within contracting. Pluggin is onboarding public buying authorities across the civic infrastructure - scaling its buying community and their collective public procurement spend to over £10 billion.
Putting Taxpayer Value and Resident Impact First
Public spending belongs to the public, and Gwent Police is now using the civic infrastructure embedded within Gwent communities by Pluggin to ensure every public pound spent on commercial goods, services, and works works harder for local residents.
Provided to the police buying authority as a 100% free support service, the infrastructure now enables Gwent Police procurement teams to target commercial suppliers directly into high-need, existing activities on the ground where the most meaningful, long-term impact is achieved.
Through the infrastructure's dedicated and tech-enabled social value marketplace, commercial suppliers bidding for contracts set out clear social value commitments. Once awarded, supplier contributions are locked directly into contracts as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.) commitments. These contributions—whether delivering direct funding, essential equipment, or high-value professional expertise and skills-sharing—are mapped straight into community providers already doing vital work, ensuring local outcomes are sustained long after a contract ends.
Focus across the Gwent area of the civic infrastructure includes:
- Safety & Exploitation Prevention: Directing pledged capital, equipment, and mentoring into grassroots organisations working on the frontline.
- Small Business & Supply Chain Support: Sharing technical expertise and directing prime supply chain opportunities to local SMEs, micro-enterprises, and social ventures.
- Skills & Vocational Training: Facilitating Apprenticeship Levy transfers and corporate knowledge-sharing to upskill local residents in key local sectors.
- Community Resilience: Boosting the operational effectiveness and long-term capability of local charities and SMEs through targeted donations, sub-contracting and professional skills transfer.
Radical Public Accountability for Local Residents
A core pillar of the Pluggin civic infrastructure is total public visibility and community validation for social value. Gwent Police has replaced supplier self-produced spreadsheets/glossy corporate reports, with a public-facing marketplace where local residents, community leaders, and SMEs can view live contract social value collaborations as they evolve within this public marketplace. Everyone seeing active supplier commitments, and beneficiary-verified outcomes through a clear lens.
By capturing delivery evidence straight from frontline community beneficiaries on the ground, the infrastructure's social value marketplace produces real-time outputs from deep within communities - metrics then mapped to Treasury-aligned ONS and NHS fiscal cost-avoidance data—giving taxpayers clear, undeniable proof of how public contracting is delivering for their neighbourhood.
Zero Cost to the Taxpayer & Zero Authority Overhead
The Pluggin civic infrastructure operates independently in the public domain at zero cost to the public purse - Requiring no disruption to the procurement and contracting process or governance, there is no software installation, API integration, or internal database access required and Gwent Police is now immediately deploying its procurement workflow to streamline compliance and boost public visibility over supplier contributions to locally managed health, safety and resilience impact.
Jay Baughan, Founder of Pluggin:
"We are delighted to support Gwent Police as we scale our civic infrastructure across South Wales and Gwent areas. By bringing social value out of closed-door surveys and into our public-facing marketplace arena, we give commercial suppliers a clear arena to compete on genuine community value. Making social value visible to everyone ensures that state expenditure acts as a true engine for local health, safety, and long-term community resilience."