Social value is no longer a box-ticking exercise. For many public sector contracts, it accounts for 10 to 20% of the total evaluation score — and evaluators are increasingly sophisticated at distinguishing genuine commitments from empty promises.
What is social value?
Social value refers to the wider benefits your contract delivery creates for the local community and society. The Social Value Act 2012, strengthened in 2020 for central government, requires public sector buyers to consider social value in their procurement decisions.
In practice this covers employment and skills (apprenticeships, local hiring, training), environmental sustainability (carbon reduction, circular economy), health and wellbeing, and community and inclusion.
The themes buyers use
Most public sector frameworks align to themes from the government\'s Social Value Model: economic resilience, tackling economic inequality, fighting climate change, equal opportunity, and wellbeing.
How to build a credible social value offer
First, assess your baseline. What social value are you already delivering? Local employment figures, apprenticeship numbers, carbon footprint, supply chain diversity. Measure it before you write about it.
Second, identify place-specific commitments. Generic social value commits score poorly. Tailor your offer to the specific geography and community of the contract.
Third, make it measurable. Every commitment should have a measurable outcome. Not "we will support local businesses" but "30% of our supply chain spend on this contract will go to suppliers within 30 miles."
Fourth, show how you will report. Buyers want to know how you will evidence delivery. Commit to specific reporting — quarterly returns, case studies, annual social value reports.
Fifth, be realistic. Overcommitting destroys credibility. Only commit to what you can genuinely deliver and evidence.
Common mistakes
The most damaging mistakes are copying social value sections between bids without tailoring to the contract, making commitments that cannot be measured, and treating social value as a separate section rather than embedding it throughout your response.