Warmer Homes Scotland programme: annual review 2018-2019

Part 6: Objective 5 - Community Benefits

The objective of providing benefits to the wider community through vocational training and employment opportunities was included in the Warmer Homes Scotland contract through the inclusion of community benefits as a mechanism to ensure that the full potential of the contract to deliver value for money by widening the impact of the scheme to the wider communities. This is being achieved through Warmworks working towards agreed targets as set out in the Employment and Skills Plan (ESP) contained within the contract.

The ESP was reviewed and revised targets were agreed in March 2017 to include definitions of each target.

Table 14 shows the progress made up to 31 March 2019 in delivering the Community Benefits outlined in the ESP. Work will be carried out in 2019/20 to revise these targets and definitions based on the additional offer made by Warmworks as part of the negotiations to extend the contract for a further 2 years. This will be examined in more detail in the 2019/20 Annual Review.

Recommendation 9 - The 2019/20 Annual Review should outline the new ESP targets and focus on how the individual targets have been defined.

Auditing Community Benefits

As the 2018/19 operating year continued the process of auditing the ESP targets being claimed by Warmworks was completely bedded in and the audit reports showed a high confidence level in all aspects of delivery of the community benefits.

Pennington Choices audited 4 (1/5^th) of Warmworks’ contractors as well as carrying out an audit of Warmworks itself. The outcome of these audits showed that all evidence and paperwork was in order to support the number and variety of deliverables that were claimed against the ESP targets. Pennington Choices also evidenced compliance in the other areas of community benefits required by the contract such as paying all employees the Living Wage and ensuring all employees were properly security checked and had all the correct qualifications to carry out work under the Warmer Homes Scotland contract.

The schedule and scope for auditing all aspects of the community benefits being delivered under the contract is now well established and will continue to the end of the contract. The schedule is flexible to allow for any ad hoc audits that may be required while the scope of each audit will be determined at the time the audit is due to take place so that any current policy initiatives or concerns can be looked at and included in the audits, if required.

As can be seen from the above table Warmworks have achieved 14 out of the 16 ESP targets. On average targets have been exceeded by a factor of 28.9 with a range between 1.1 and 33.5.

Of the 2 ESP targets that have not yet been met one is on target to be met and one is not. The target that is not on course to be met is the target for Graduates – persons benefitting from graduate positions. The Scottish Government continues to work with Warmworks to identify ways in which this target can be met.

Security and the Living Wage

Work continued throughout the 2018/19 operating year to put in place a process to audit both the security arrangements, in particular to verify the Disclosure Scotland Certificates, and has proved to be more complex than first anticipated. This process remains a work in progress and will be completed in the 2019/20 operating year. However, it should be noted that this does not mean that appropriate security checks are not being carried out on all contractors carrying out work on or connected to the Warmer Homes Scotland contract, only that the auditing process for these checks is not fully in place, although this is nearing completion.

The process to audit the Living Wage requirement of the Warmer Homes Scotland contract has been put in place and has verified that Warmworks and all of its contractors are compliant with this requirement of the contract.

Recommendation 10 - The 2019/20 Annual Review should report on whether the audit process for security matters is fully in place.