Social value in tenders: the 10% rule

Social value is now one of the most decisive — and most misunderstood — parts of a UK tender. Weighted at a minimum of 10% on central government contracts and often more elsewhere, it frequently separates first place from second. This guide explains how it’s scored and how to win it without making promises you’ll regret.

What social value means

Social value is the wider economic, social and environmental benefit a contract delivers beyond the goods or services themselves — local jobs and apprenticeships, spend with local SMEs, community initiatives, carbon reduction, support for disadvantaged groups. The principle, embedded in the Public Services (Social Value) Act and strengthened since, is that public money should buy more than the immediate deliverable: it should leave the community better off.

Where the 10% comes from

Central government contracts must apply a minimum 10% weighting to social value under the government’s social value model. Many other public buyers — councils, NHS bodies, housing providers — apply their own weightings, frequently matching or exceeding 10%, with some going to 20% or higher. Because the strongest bidders tend to cluster closely on quality and price, that 10–20% is very often the deciding margin. Treating social value as an afterthought is, statistically, handing the contract to whoever didn’t.

The government social value model

The government’s social value model organises social value into themes — covering areas such as economic inequality, climate change, equal opportunity and community wellbeing — each with policy outcomes and award criteria. When a central government tender scores social value, it’s usually against these themes. Knowing which themes a given contract prioritises (the tender will say) lets you target commitments where the marks actually are, rather than spreading effort thinly.

The National TOMs and proxy values

Many buyers measure social value using the National TOMs — Themes, Outcomes and Measures — a framework that attaches a proxy financial value to each commitment. Offer ten local apprenticeships and the framework assigns a £ value; commit to a volume of local spend and that converts too. The appeal for buyers is comparability: every bidder’s social value gets a number. The danger for bidders is the temptation to inflate — because those numbers become contractual.

What makes a commitment score

Four tests separate scoring commitments from empty ones:

• Additional — genuinely caused by this contract, not your existing activity. Evaluators discount business-as-usual.
• Local — tied to the buyer’s community, with named places, partners and programmes. “We support good causes” scores nothing.
• Measurable — specific numbers, dates and a monitoring method. Vague intentions can’t be marked or enforced.
• Proportionate — realistic for the contract’s size and margin. Overcommitting is a liability, not a strength.

The overpromising trap

The most common social value mistake isn’t promising too little — it’s promising too much. Social value commitments become contractual obligations, monitored through the contract’s life, sometimes with financial penalties for non-delivery. A bidder who wins on inflated apprenticeship numbers or unrealistic local-spend targets has bought a problem: under-deliver and you risk penalties, reputational damage and a weak position at re-tender. Your genuine social value capacity is finite and must be allocated carefully across live bids so you never double-commit the same apprenticeship to two contracts. Our social value writing service models commitments to be ambitious but deliverable.

Writing a winning social value response

Strong responses read as a credible plan, not a wish list. Name the specific programmes, the local partners (the college, the job brokerage, the community group), the numbers and the timeline, and explain how each commitment will be delivered and measured. Tie everything to the themes the tender prioritises. Build a reusable menu of costed commitments so each bid assembles from proven, deliverable building blocks rather than inventing promises under deadline pressure. And apply the same honesty as the rest of good bid writing: evidence over adjectives, specifics over scope.

Building a social value menu you can actually deliver

The single biggest mindset shift for bidders is to stop treating social value as something you invent per tender and start treating it as a finite resource you allocate. Your genuine capacity to create social value — apprenticeship places, volunteering days, local spend, carbon reductions — is real but limited, and committing the same apprenticeship to three different live bids is how providers end up unable to deliver what they promised. The professional approach is a costed menu: a documented bank of commitments you can genuinely make, each with its proxy value, delivery mechanism and the contract scale it suits, from which you assemble each bid.

A good menu spans the common themes buyers score — local employment and skills, supporting SMEs and the local supply chain, environmental and carbon action, and community wellbeing — with two or three concrete, named options under each. “We will create local employment” becomes “we will recruit two apprentices through [named local college] within the first six months, retained for the contract term”. The difference is the difference between a 2 and a 5.

Crucially, the menu must be owned by someone who knows what you can deliver, so commitments are never double-counted across simultaneous bids. This is the heart of our social value writing service, and it folds naturally into a wider bid library. Build it once and every future bid’s social value section becomes an assembly job from proven, deliverable parts — faster to write and far safer to deliver. It also makes the honest bid/no-bid conversation easier: if a tender’s social value expectations exceed your menu’s realistic capacity, that tells you something about whether to bid at all.