Sustainability

45% of the NHS's emissions are found in our supply chain. Addressing this is critical to the NHS achieving net zero by 2045. Concurrently, social outcomes are heavily linked to health outcomes. Our Sustainability and Social Value team work to support our partners to decarbonise and unlock additional social value in their contracts, aimed at improving the health of communities.

We do this by focusing on three pillars:

1. Sustainable frameworks

Testing and evidencing supplier sustainability, social value and modern slavery actions at framework level to assure partners of high sustainability standards when buying from us

2. Realising social value in procurements

Monitoring and evidencing our suppliers’ commitments to unlock value for our members’ communities

3. Member support

Working on behalf of our members to deliver benefits across the membership, including hosting a sustainability network and providing guidance and training on social value evaluation and management.

Leading by example 

Underpinning all of this is staff development and training to ensure sustainability is a core part of all our teams’ ways of working. Our commitment to continually improving our own performance has resulted in achievements including:

• being the first NHS organisation to achieve Silver Carbon Literate Organisation accreditation
• being an HCSA Sustainability and Social Value Award winner
• ongoing investment in staff training and capability development
• continuous improvement of our frameworks, guidance and member support

Please visit the Sustainability and Social Value services pages to find our more.