Social value in public-sector bids: a practical guide

Social value is the part of a tender where buyers ask what your contract will do for the area beyond the work itself: jobs, training, community benefit, environmental improvement. For many suppliers it is the least familiar section of an ITT, and it is often the section that separates the top two bids. It is also one of the few scored areas where a small local firm holds a genuine advantage over a national contractor, if the response is written properly.

Why it is in your tender

Two pieces of policy put it there. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires councils and other public bodies to consider how services they commission could improve economic, social and environmental wellbeing. For central government, PPN 06/20 went further and made social value an explicitly scored criterion with a minimum 10 per cent weighting, an approach carried forward under the Procurement Act 2023 regime.

Councils set their own weightings, and many sit at the ambitious end, with social value at 15 or even 20 per cent of the evaluation. On a 60/40 quality-price tender, that can make social value the single largest scored question in the quality envelope. Read the weighting before deciding how much effort the section deserves.

Related but distinct: PPN 06/21 required a Carbon Reduction Plan for large central-government contracts (over £5 million a year). Most tenders sit well below that, but the direction of travel is clear, and buyers increasingly ask about emissions regardless of contract size.

How it is measured

Many buyers evaluate social value against a framework of standard measures, the most common being the National TOMs (Themes, Outcomes and Measures). Each measure has a defined unit and a proxy financial value: a local employee hired, an apprenticeship week delivered, hours of volunteering, tonnes of waste diverted. Bids are compared partly on the quantified value of what they commit to.

Two practical consequences. First, quantify: "we will support local employment" scores poorly next to "we will recruit two staff from within the borough in year one". Second, commitments are usually contractualised and monitored, with reporting through platforms the buyer nominates. Whatever you promise, you will be asked to evidence.

What a supplier can honestly offer

The realistic menu below applies across sectors. Pick the items you can actually deliver at your size.

Employment and skills

• Recruit locally, and say how: named job centres, community organisations or veteran and ex-offender programmes you will work with.
• Apprenticeships in your trade or profession, with the training provider named.
• Work experience placements for local schools and colleges, quantified in weeks.

Community

• Volunteer days that use skills you already have: an IT firm running digital-skills sessions, a caterer supporting a community kitchen, a construction firm improving a community building.
• Donated materials, surplus stock or equipment time for community groups.
• Mentoring or supporting local organisations connected to the service you deliver, which also strengthens your quality answers.

Environment

• Fleet and energy: cleaner vehicles, route planning to cut mileage, lower-energy premises and kit. Modest claims with numbers beat grand claims without them.
• Waste diverted from landfill, with percentages and the destination stated.
• Improvements beyond the specification where your trade allows them, from biodiversity on managed land to refurbishing donated hardware.

Local economy

• Spend with suppliers in the borough or region. If most of your supply chain is already local, that is measurable value, so state it as a percentage of contract spend.

Writing the response

• Tie every commitment to this contract. Social value is scored on what the contract will deliver, so link each item to the sites, the workforce and the duration in question.
• Be specific and modest rather than broad and vague. Three quantified, deliverable commitments outscore ten aspirations. Evaluators mark credibility as well as ambition.
• Never commit to what you cannot deliver. Undelivered social value becomes a contract management issue, and it follows you into the reference and feedback loop for the next bid. If a buyer weights social value at 20 per cent and you can honestly offer little, that is useful information about which tenders suit you, and it belongs in your bid or no-bid decision rather than in an inflated promise.
• Reuse the structure, not the text. Keep a live register of your deliverable commitments with costs and evidence, then tailor it per bid. It turns the section from a scramble into a strength.

Social value rewards firms that are genuinely embedded where they work. For a local business bidding on local contracts, that is the position you already occupy. The job is to describe it in the buyer's units.