Procurement Policy Note 026 (PPN 026) is the next edition of the UK government Social Value Model. It was published on GOV.UK on 5 August 2026 and applies to central government procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027, at 1 million pounds inc VAT or above. If you are writing a proposal now, this is very probably the edition your bid will be scored against, because the date that decides it is when the procurement was commenced, not when you wrote the answer.

In plain terms: when you bid for public work, some of your marks depend on the wider economic, social and environmental benefit you will deliver alongside the contract itself, not just your price and technical quality. Social value is a scored section of the bid, and a response that does not address it in a structured, evidenced way gives away marks a better-prepared competitor will take.

This guide covers which edition applies to your bid, the minimum weightings, what the evidence has to look like, the measurement framework many buyers use instead, and the pitfalls that cost suppliers marks.

1. Which edition applies to your bid

PPN 026 was published on 5 August 2026. It applies to central government procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027, at 1 million pounds inc VAT or above. Procurements commenced before that date fall under the previous edition of the Social Value Model.

Three things follow from that, and each of them decides something on a live bid.

  • The commencement date governs, not the submission date. A procurement does not change edition part way through, so a supplier bidding across the turn of the year can be answering two editions in the same month. Read the tender documents to find out which one you are in.
  • The threshold is a value test on the procurement, at 1 million pounds inc VAT or above. Below it, whether social value is scored at all is a matter for the contracting authority.
  • A PPN is Cabinet Office policy rather than statute. What binds you on any given tender is the requirement the buyer publishes in its own documents. Where the invitation to tender names the model and the weighting, that statement governs the bid in front of you. Check it per tender rather than per calendar, and treat the edition dates as the starting question rather than the final answer.

Plenty of contracting authorities outside central government also evaluate social value as a matter of their own policy, and many of them use a different framework entirely. Section 4 covers the most common one.

2. The minimum weighting, and what a weighting is

PPN 026 sets a minimum social value weighting of 10% from 1 million pounds inc VAT to 5 million, and 20% at 5 million pounds inc VAT or above. The upper band reads “or above”, which is inclusive, so a procurement at exactly 5 million pounds inc VAT sits in the 20% band. The practical consequence is that 10% is the floor anywhere in scope and never less.

A weighting is not a score. The figure is the share of the total evaluation the social value section carries, not a mark you have to reach. If a contract is evaluated on 60% quality, 30% price and 10% social value, a bidder who scores nothing on social value can still win on quality and price. In a competitive tender where several bidders land close together on the other two, the social value score is what separates them, and a weighting you maximise while your competitors treat it as a formality is a real margin.

A contracting authority is free to set a weighting above the minimum, and plenty do, particularly in local government and NHS procurement. The figure that matters is the one published in the award criteria for the tender in front of you, so read it rather than assuming the floor.

Every figure in this section is published beside its primary source on our sources page, with the date and a link to GOV.UK.

3. What this guide states, and what it does not

The scoring model is not summarised here. The dates, the threshold and the two weightings above are each recorded with a source. The internal structure of the model, whatever it turns out to be, is not, and a guide to a compliance subject that fills that in from expectation is worth less than nothing to the person relying on it.

So this page states four things about the edition and stops: that it is the next edition of the Social Value Model, its publication date, its application date, and the value threshold, plus the two minimum weightings. When the rest can each carry its own citation, this guide will be rewritten against it.

What does not depend on the edition is the working method, and that is what the rest of this guide is about: find the question the buyer actually asked, commit to something measurable, evidence it in the unit the buyer counts in, and keep the record from day one of delivery. That is the same work in every edition and in every framework.

One thing this page is not saying. CrowAgent stops supporting the previous edition of the Social Value Model in its products on 31 December 2026, so that no customer is drafting against a model we have stopped maintaining once the 1 January 2027 date passes. That is our own product decision about our own roadmap. It is not a statement about the status of any notice on GOV.UK.

4. The TOMs framework and National TOMs proxy values

The National TOMs (Themes, Outcomes, and Measures) framework is a separate thing from a Procurement Policy Note, and a genuinely useful one. It is published by the Social Value Portal with the Local Government Association and the National Social Value Taskforce, and it is widely used, particularly by local authorities, NHS bodies and housing associations, many of which name it in their own tender documents.

So two different kinds of instrument are live in UK public procurement, and they ask different questions. Where a buyer asks for TOMs, answer in TOMs. Where a buyer names the Social Value Model, answer in the terms that buyer publishes. A response written for one does not automatically score the other.

The TOMs framework is structured into themes, outcomes within each theme, and measures, the specific activities or commitments that generate those outcomes. Each measure has a defined unit, for example the number of apprenticeships created, the number of hours of volunteering delivered, or the tonnes of CO2 emissions avoided. Each measure also carries a proxy value, a monetary estimate of the benefit generated by one unit of it. That monetisation is what TOMs adds.

Proxy values change between editions, and the edition your buyer names is the one that counts. We do not republish them here, because a proxy value quoted from a guide and not from the buyer’s stated edition is exactly the sort of figure that falls apart under scrutiny. That rule is not specific to this article. Every figure this site prints is published beside the statute, policy note or framework it comes from, which you can read in full on our sources page, and a number we cannot attribute that way does not get printed at all.

How a monetised TOMs score is calculated

Where a buyer does ask for a monetised TOMs total, it is the sum across all selected measures, and for each measure the formula is:

Social value = Number of beneficiaries (or units) × Proxy value per unit

Here is a worked example. The unit quantities and the per-unit values below are illustrative placeholders chosen to show the shape of the arithmetic. They are not National TOMs figures and must not be quoted as such. Substitute the values from the edition your buyer names.

ILLUSTRATIVE ONLY - not National TOMs values

10 apprenticeships (Level 3+) × £8,000 example rate  = £80,000
500 hours volunteering        × £15 example rate     =  £7,500
200 tonnes CO2 avoided        × £70 example rate     = £14,000
5 jobs for disadvantaged      × £20,000 example rate = £100,000

Illustrative total = £201,500

Where this method is in use, the total feeds the social value score, and authorities differ on what they do with it. Some normalise across bidders by dividing each bid’s total by the highest submitted. Others use banding thresholds. The ITT specifies the method, and it is worth finding before you optimise anything.

Under either method, select measures that are relevant to the contract and credible given your capacity. Commitments that look impressive on paper but that the organisation cannot deliver fail at the evidence stage and create post-award problems that outlast the bid.

5. Which sectors are affected

PPN 026 applies to central government procurement, but social value evaluation reaches much further than that. Any supplier bidding for UK public sector work should expect to meet it:

  • Construction and infrastructure. Major projects often set a weighting above the minimum, with measures focused on local employment, apprenticeships, and emissions during delivery.
  • IT and professional services. Government digital and technology contracts increasingly require commitments around skills development, diversity, and local economic impact.
  • Facilities management. FM contracts for government estates and NHS facilities typically include local employment and environmental performance measures.
  • Healthcare and social care. NHS procurement has adopted social value evaluation as standard practice, with emphasis on wellbeing, community health, and equal opportunity.
  • Defence and security. Ministry of Defence procurement applies social value scoring, often weighted towards skills development, regional economic impact, and the Armed Forces Covenant.
  • Education. Schools, colleges, and universities increasingly require social value commitments from contractors and service providers.

The question is not whether social value applies to your bid, but how effectively you respond to it.

6. Evidence requirements and post-award reporting

Social value is not a box-ticking exercise. Contracting authorities evaluate the credibility of social value commitments at the bid stage and monitor delivery afterwards. The promises you make in your tender have to be backed by evidence, both at the point of submission and throughout the contract lifecycle.

At bid stage

Evaluators are looking for evidence that your organisation can credibly deliver what you have committed to. That means:

  • Track record: Evidence that you have delivered similar social value outcomes on previous contracts. If you are committing to create apprenticeships, evaluators want to see that you have an established apprenticeship programme with named training providers.
  • Organisational policies: Relevant policies such as your social value policy, environmental management system (ISO 14001 or equivalent), equality and diversity policy, and modern slavery statement.
  • Delivery methodology: A clear explanation of how each commitment will be delivered, including timelines, responsible individuals or teams, and dependencies.
  • Supply chain engagement: If your commitments involve supply chain partners, evidence that those partners are aware of and committed to delivering their share.

After award, the commitment is contractual

On a public contract with an estimated value of more than £5 million, the Procurement Act 2023 turns performance into a published record. Section 52 requires at least three key performance indicators to be set before the contract is entered into, and published. Section 71 requires performance to be assessed against those indicators at least once every 12 months, and again when the contract is terminated, with information about the assessment published. Both duties are set out with their dates and their primary sources on our sources page.

Below that threshold the mechanism is the contract rather than the statute, and the effect on you is much the same. Authorities typically require reporting at regular intervals, usually quarterly or six-monthly, covering quantified progress against each committed measure, evidence of delivery such as enrolment certificates, volunteering logs or carbon audit results, and an explanation for any shortfall.

Many contracting authorities now use digital platforms, such as the Social Value Portal, to collect and verify social value reporting. Failure to deliver committed social value can result in contract management escalation, reduced payments under performance-related clauses, and reputational damage that affects future bids. In serious cases, persistent failure may be treated as a material breach of contract.

Audit risk

The National Audit Office (NAO) and individual contracting authorities have the right to audit social value claims. Bidders should maintain a clear evidence trail for every measure: enrolment records for apprenticeships, timesheets for volunteering, invoices showing local supply chain spend, and emissions calculations with methodology notes. If you cannot evidence it, it did not happen, and your future bids will suffer as a result. Building a clear evidence habit from the start of contract delivery is far easier than attempting to reconstruct records retrospectively.

Practical tip: Start collecting evidence from day one of contract delivery. Do not wait until the first reporting deadline. Set up a shared evidence folder with subfolders for each social value measure, and assign responsibility for evidence collection to a named individual in your delivery team.

7. Common pitfalls that cost suppliers marks

Based on published evaluation feedback and contracting authority guidance, the same errors recur in social value responses. Avoiding them is often worth more marks than adding another measure:

  • Generic narratives. Describing company values and policies without tying them to specific, quantified commitments. Evaluators score what you will do on this contract, not what you believe in general.
  • Answering a question the buyer did not ask. Each procurement names what it is scoring, often narrowly. Offering commitments against everything else wastes word count and signals a lack of attention to the brief. This is the single most common failure, and it is the easiest to avoid.
  • Reusing a bid library without re-reading the tender. A social value answer written for one buyer’s framework, dropped unedited into another buyer’s question, is visible to an evaluator on the first paragraph. Check which edition and which framework this procurement names before you reuse anything.
  • Missing additionality. Buyers score what is additional to the core contract requirement. If you are already required to hire 50 staff to deliver the contract, those 50 jobs are delivery, not social value. The social value sits in the apprenticeships, training or community benefit beyond that baseline.
  • Overclaiming beyond what you can evidence. Commitments go into the contract as terms or KPIs, so post-award reporting is not optional. Committing to what you cannot evidence risks performance clauses and damages your credibility on future bids.
  • Monetising when the buyer did not ask for it. Where a buyer does ask for a monetised total, use the National TOMs edition it names, do not carry proxy values over from an older edition, and do not count one activity under several measures.
  • Breadth without depth. Selecting many measures with token commitments against each scores worse than a smaller set of substantial, credible commitments.
  • Ignoring the contract context. Proposing activity unrelated to the contract geography, workforce, or subject matter. A facilities management contract in Manchester should propose local employment in Manchester, not corporate volunteering in London.
  • No evidence-tracking plan. Making commitments without explaining how they will be monitored and reported. Many contracts require quarterly social value reporting, and buyers reward bidders who plan for it from the outset.

8. How CrowMark builds a social value response

CrowMark is CrowAgent’s bid and tender product. The variant relevant here is CrowMark for Suppliers, which answers tenders, RFPs, RFIs, PQQs and SQs, and it takes on the slowest parts of a social value response: assembling the evidence, drafting the narrative and keeping the record afterwards.

CrowMark scores social value from evidence your organisation has already submitted, and cites the source of every figure it produces. That work does not change with the edition. What changes is which model the output is mapped to, and CrowMark reports the model it used on every draft, so a reviewer can see it on the page rather than having to ask.

AI narrative generation

Once you have selected your measures and entered your quantities, CrowMark generates a draft social value narrative using server-side AI. The narrative references specific measures and quantities and is written in the formal tone public sector evaluators expect. The language model never computes the figures: any generated prose containing a £ or % that the computed figures do not support is rejected rather than shown. You review, edit, and approve before anything is exported. The AI handles the first draft. Your subject matter expertise handles the final polish.

Evidence tracker

CrowMark includes an integrated evidence tracker that lets you log evidence against each committed measure throughout the contract lifecycle. Upload enrolment certificates, volunteering timesheets, emissions calculations, and supply chain spend data directly against the relevant measure. The platform sends monthly email reminders to keep evidence collection on track and generates progress reports you can send to contracting authorities.

One pass, not a blank page

The workflow runs end to end in a single sitting: contract profile in, measures priced against the TOMs library, narrative drafted, evidence plan attached, response exported. For an SME with no dedicated social value team, the work that changes is the assembly, not the judgement. You still decide which commitments your organisation can actually keep.

Ready to score your next bid? CrowMark handles measure scoring, AI narrative drafting, and evidence tracking, all in one platform. Request access

Sources

  • Cabinet Office, PPN 026: The Social Value Model. Source for the publication date of 5 August 2026, the application date of 1 January 2027, the 1 million pounds inc VAT threshold and the two minimum weightings: gov.uk
  • Procurement Act 2023, section 52, key performance indicators. Source for the more than £5 million threshold and the at least three published indicators: legislation.gov.uk
  • Procurement Act 2023, section 71, assessment of contract performance. Source for the 12 month assessment interval and the duty to publish: legislation.gov.uk
  • Cabinet Office, Procurement Policy Notes (collection): gov.uk/government/collections/procurement-policy-notes
  • Social Value Portal, National TOMs: socialvalueportal.com

Last reviewed: 30 August 2026. Any monetary figures shown in the worked example above are illustrative placeholders and are not National TOMs proxy values. Take proxy values from the National TOMs edition your buyer names.

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