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Purchasing from the third sector can generate important benefits for local authorities, third sector organizations and wider society. Accordingly, policy documents increasingly include third sector organizations in public procurement strategies. Against this background, this article analyses how third sector organizations have fared in public procurement in a local council in the UK that has a reputation for socially responsible public procurement. The findings show the importance of continuously monitoring public spending on procurement and highlight the need for further research on the involvement of third sector organizations in public sector procurement. This article addresses an important area for public administration, namely how to achieve social value und social benefits in public procurement. More specifically, this article focuses on the inclusion of third sector organizations in public procurement. Departing from a brief overview over the benefits of procuring from third sector organizations, this article shows that the successful inclusion of third sector organizations needs to be accompanied by continuous monitoring of their share in public sector spend and points to the need for key performance indicators to continuously monitor third sector spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy actors tasked with delivering against rural housing needs face a key conceptual conundrum familiar to researchers: how to define need and how to link that concept to the idea of localness. Community perspectives on this issue reveal that ‘official’ priorities are often not considered to reflect the true nature of local need. There is considerable appetite for setting ‘community priority’ and for assuming direct responsibility for housing delivery. Discussions with community groups in different parts of rural England are used to expose these concerns, which accord with the UK government's localism agenda, a component of which is the empowerment of parish councils to deliver additional homes for ‘local need’, above planned allocations. However, although community perspectives may become vital in driving future policy outcomes, there are associated risks. These perspectives may belong to a dominant minority, with a tendency to draw narrow definitions of localness and local interest as a means of closing the door to unwanted development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]