Social value: what buyers actually want

Somewhere in most tenders now sits a question that has nothing to do with your product: what will this contract contribute to society? That is the social value question, it commonly carries ten per cent or more of the total marks, and it is answered badly by more bidders than any other question. That makes it one of the easiest places for a well-prepared small firm to gain ground.

Where the requirement comes from

Two obligations drive it. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires public bodies to consider, before procuring services, how the procurement might improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of their area. Central government went further: since 2021 its policy has required social value to be explicitly evaluated in central government procurements with a minimum weighting of ten per cent, scored against a published model of themes and outcomes. The Procurement Act 2023 reinforced the direction by requiring buyers to have regard to maximising public benefit.

Councils and NHS bodies each apply their own version, often with published local priorities: a borough's social value policy might emphasise local employment; an NHS trust might emphasise health inequalities or carbon reduction. The vocabulary varies; the underlying question does not.

What buyers are actually asking

Strip the framework language away and the buyer wants to know three things:

1. What specific, additional benefits will you deliver if you win this contract?
2. How do those benefits connect to this place and this buyer's stated priorities?
3. How will you measure and report them, so the promises can be held to account?

"Additional" matters. Delivering the service itself is not social value; social value is what the contract contributes beyond the specification. And "this contract" matters: buyers score commitments tied to the contract in front of them, not your company's general good citizenship.

The themes that recur

Across central government's model and most local policies, the same families of outcome appear:

• Employment and skills. Jobs created for local people, apprenticeships, work placements, interview coaching for people far from the job market.
• Small business and supply chain. Subcontracting to local firms and voluntary sector organisations, prompt payment, mentoring smaller suppliers.
• Environment. Carbon reduction on the contract, waste and packaging reduction, low-emission transport, biodiversity work.
• Community. Volunteering hours, support for community organisations, use of local facilities.
• Wellbeing and inclusion. Fair work practices, mental health support, accessibility, opportunities for underrepresented groups.

You do not need commitments in every theme. One or two themes, chosen because they fit the contract and the place, beat a scatter of token gestures across all five.

What scores well

• Proportionate and specific numbers. "One apprenticeship in year one, recruited from within the borough, supported to a level 3 qualification" is scoreable. "We will create apprenticeship opportunities" is not.
• Commitments that flow from the work itself. If the contract puts your staff in a community weekly, offer what that presence makes cheap for you and valuable for them. The best social value costs the bidder little because it rides on the delivery model.
• Local knowledge. Name the buyer's published priorities and respond to them. A bidder who has read the council's social value policy and says so, specifically, stands out immediately.
• A measurement plan. Say what you will count, how often you will report it, and who owns delivery. Buyers increasingly monitor social value commitments through the contract, and they score bidders who make that easy.

What scores nothing

• Recycled corporate social responsibility text: national charity partnerships and head-office policies with no connection to the contract or the area.
• Promises without numbers, owners or dates.
• Over-promising. Evaluators discount commitments that are implausible for the bidder's size, and contract managers remember firms that promised twenty volunteering days and delivered none. Under-promise at bid stage only what you would be happy to see written into the contract, because it will be.
• Treating the question as a tax. A grudging paragraph reads as exactly that.

A note for very small firms

Social value scoring is meant to be proportionate to contract size and supplier size, and small firms often have a natural advantage: you probably already employ locally, buy locally and know the area. Say so with numbers. Three sentences of true, specific, local fact routinely outscore a page of borrowed strategy language.