Social value has gone from a tick-box afterthought to a scored, sometimes decisive, part of a public bid. Teams that still treat it as a closing paragraph about “giving back to the community” are leaving marks — occasionally the winning margin — on the table. Here’s how it’s actually scored, on both sides of the Irish Sea, and how to earn the marks rather than gesture at them.
What “social value” means in scoring terms
Social value is the wider economic, social and environmental benefit a contract delivers beyond the core goods or service: local jobs and skills, support for SMEs and social enterprises, carbon reduction, community benefit. Critically, for scoring purposes it must be additional to the core deliverable — you can’t claim the service you’re being paid to provide as your social value contribution.
How it’s scored in the UK
In the UK, social value is now a mandatory, weighted award criterion for central government. The framework has tightened recently:
- PPN 06/20 (in force from January 2021) first required central government to apply a minimum 10% weighting to social value.
- PPN 002, aligned to the Procurement Act 2023, replaced it — mandatory for in-scope central government bodies for procurements from 1 October 2025 (after a transition from 24 February 2025). It keeps the minimum 10% weighting and updates the Social Value Model around five missions and eight outcomes.
A few practical points. The Procurement Act itself is largely silent on social value; the requirements sit in the National Procurement Policy Statement (which authorities must “have regard” to) and the PPNs. The 10% is a floor, not a ceiling — many local authorities and NHS bodies weight social value at 20–30%. And commitments made in your bid are increasingly written into the contract as terms or KPIs, so you’ll be held to what you promise.
How it’s handled in Ireland
Ireland takes a different route. There’s no single mandatory percentage equivalent to the UK’s 10%. Instead, social and environmental considerations are driven mainly through Green Public Procurement (GPP) and OGP policy:
- Circular 17/2025 (replacing Circular 20/2019) strengthened GPP into a “comply or explain” regime — public bodies must explain when national GPP criteria are not included in tenders above national thresholds.
- The Buying Greener: GPP Strategy and Action Plan 2024–2027 and the EPA’s national GPP criteria (searchable via the OGP’s GPP Criteria Search tool) supply ready-made green criteria for contracting authorities to drop into tenders.
- Social considerations — supporting social enterprises and community organisations, and reserved contracts / sheltered workshops under the 2016 Regulations — are encouraged rather than centrally mandated by a fixed weighting.
So in Ireland, social and green value is real and growing, but it appears as specific criteria the authority chooses for that contract, rather than a blanket 10%. Read each tender for what’s actually being scored.
Why most social value answers score badly
The same failures recur (they’re the general reasons bids lose marks, in social-value clothing):
- Generic intentions, no commitments. “We are committed to supporting local communities” scores nothing. A number, a timeframe, and a named activity score.
- Unmeasurable claims. If you can’t attach a metric and a method of reporting, an evaluator can’t reward it.
- Bolted-on, not proportionate. Social value must relate to the subject matter of the contract; tangential offers read as padding.
- Claiming the core service as social value. A common disqualifier of marks — the benefit must be additional.
How to win social value marks
- Read the model being used — the UK Social Value Model’s missions and outcomes, or the specific GPP/social criteria in an Irish tender — and answer against those exact headings.
- Commit, don’t aspire. State what you will deliver, how much, by when, and how you’ll measure it: “12 apprenticeship weeks in the contract locality in year one, reported quarterly.”
- Make it proportionate and local. Tie commitments to the contract’s scale, value and geography. (The proportionality principle matters: a €2m contract invites a different scale of commitment than a €100k one.)
- Evidence delivery capability. Show you’ve delivered comparable social value before — a named prior commitment you actually met beats any promise.
- Mean it. Commitments become contract KPIs; over-promising to win marks creates a delivery problem later.
Social value is now a quality criterion like any other under MEAT and MAT: published, weighted, and won with specific, evidenced, measurable commitments.
Check whether your social value answer actually scores. BidReview marks it against the criteria the way an evaluator will — and flags vague, unmeasurable or non-additional commitments. Run the free scorecard →
