Ten percent sounds small. In a competition where three bidders are within a few points of each other on price and quality, it is the whole margin.
Social value is also the part of the bid most often written last, by whoever is free on the Thursday, in language borrowed from a website. Which makes it the easiest place in the whole document to gain ground on a better-resourced competitor.
What the rules actually require
For central government, the current policy is PPN 002, which replaced PPN 06/20 and its social value model. In-scope organisations must apply it to procurements started under the Procurement Act 2023 on or after 1 October 2025.
It requires a minimum weighting of 10% of the total score available for social value. The only permitted exception is where preliminary market engagement shows that applying it would significantly reduce competition because the market is not mature enough to deliver it.
Outside central government the picture varies, and the variation matters:
- Local government and the wider public sector in England are not bound by PPN 002 but very often apply the same 10% floor or higher, alongside their own local economic priorities.
- Northern Ireland has required a minimum 10% of award criteria for social value since June 2022 under PPN 01/21, revised with effect from 24 February 2025, with a strong focus on employment and skills and mandatory fair work requirements.
- Wales has statutory socially responsible procurement duties under the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023, framed around economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing — the Welsh language included.
- Scotland does not use the term. It has the sustainable procurement duty, community benefit requirements on larger contracts, and Fair Work First, including the real Living Wage.
Same underlying idea, four different vocabularies. Using the wrong one is an immediate signal that the bid was recycled.
Why smaller suppliers have the advantage
A national contractor answering a social value question writes about its national programme: thousands of volunteering hours across the group, a partnership with a national charity, a corporate net zero commitment.
Evaluators score what will happen on this contract, in this place. And a large bidder cannot credibly promise that a specific local person will be employed on a specific local job, because it does not yet know which regional office will deliver it.
You can. That is the whole advantage, and it is why social value regularly decides competitions in favour of the smaller bidder.
How to write an answer that scores
Be specific. Not "we will support local employment" but "we will recruit two full-time operatives from within the borough within eight weeks of contract start, advertised through the local jobcentre and the college."
Be measurable. Numbers, dates, named partners. If you cannot count it, the evaluator cannot score it and the contract manager cannot monitor it.
Be additional. Social value means something you would not otherwise have done, brought about by this contract. Business as usual scores poorly: your existing recycling policy is not social value, a new one adopted for this contract is.
Be proportionate. On a £60,000 contract, one apprenticeship and a local subcontractor is credible. Ten apprenticeships is not, and overclaiming is transparent to an experienced evaluator.
Be local to the buyer, not to you. A council wants benefit in its own area. If your base is forty miles away, say how you will deliver locally — local recruitment, local suppliers, a local site presence.
Be deliverable. Social value commitments increasingly become contractual, monitored through KPIs and reported. Promise what you will do, because you will be asked about it quarterly for the length of the contract.
The themes buyers actually ask about
The central government model is built around a set of themes, and most other buyers use something similar:
- Jobs and skills — local employment, apprenticeships, work placements, training, employing people who face barriers to work.
- Supply chain and small business — subcontracting to SMEs, VCSEs and social enterprises, prompt payment down the chain.
- Environment — carbon reduction, waste, biodiversity, sustainable materials and travel.
- Health, wellbeing and community — support for the community the contract serves, staff wellbeing, tackling inequality.
- Equal opportunity and inclusion — diverse workforce, accessible services, fair work practices.
Read which themes the buyer has selected. They almost always tell you, and they almost always weight them. Answering the theme they did not ask about scores nothing.
Common mistakes
Describing the company instead of the contract. The question is what this contract will produce, not what your company believes.
Copying the previous bid. Different buyer, different area, different priorities, different nation. The evaluator reads a lot of these and recognises the pattern immediately.
Vague verbs. "Support", "encourage", "promote", "explore", "aim to". Every one of them is a way of not committing to anything, and they read that way.
Ignoring the word limit. Social value answers are frequently the longest and the worst edited. Everything past the limit is unread.
Treating it as optional. On a contract where price and quality are close, this section is the decision.
Where to start
Write a social value baseline document for your business — what you already do, who you already partner with, what you could genuinely commit to on a contract of each size — and keep it current. Then, for each bid, adapt it to the buyer's themes, the buyer's area and the buyer's nation.
The first one takes a day. Every one after that takes an hour, and answers a question worth at least a tenth of the marks.
Finding contracts where your social value offer lands
TendersHub tracks 10,500+ live UK tenders across all four nations with region and value visible before you open a document — so you can concentrate on contracts near enough that your local employment, local supply chain and local partnership commitments are genuinely credible, which is exactly where those 10% of marks are won.