TL;DR
- What it is: UK Cabinet Office rule on social value in bids, published 13 February 2025, mandatory from 1 October 2025.
- The 10% rule: at least 10% of the evaluation score goes to social value.
- How you score it: five government missions, eight policy outcomes, and the standard reporting metrics beneath them.
Procurement Policy Note 002 (published 13 February 2025) is a UK Cabinet Office instruction. All central government departments, their executive agencies, and non-departmental public bodies must allocate a minimum 10% weighting of the total contract evaluation score to social value.
It applies to procurements commenced under the Procurement Act 2023 on or after 1 October 2025. For procurements commenced under the Act before that date, buyers could apply PPN 002 or continue with PPN 06/20 during the transition. PPN 06/20 has not been withdrawn.
The 5 PPN 002 missions
- M1. Kickstart economic growth: three outcomes sit here, Fair work, Skills for growth, and Resilient, innovative and flexible supply chains.
- M2. Make Britain a clean energy superpower: one outcome, Sustainable procurement practices.
- M3. Take back our streets: one outcome, Support the reduction in crime through community cohesion.
- M4. Break down barriers to opportunity: two outcomes, Employment and training for those who face barriers to employment, and Creating a pipeline of opportunities for the contract workforce.
- M5. Build an NHS fit for the future: one outcome, Increasing productivity through physical and mental wellbeing.
These are the missions of the current model. COVID-19 recovery, Levelling Up, fighting climate change, equal opportunity and wellbeing were the five themes of the previous Social Value Model under PPN 06/20, and are not the PPN 002 missions. If a bid library still uses them, it predates this model.
Key facts
- Minimum weighting: 10% of the total score, or an equivalent measurement (buyers can set higher).
- Structure: five missions, eight policy outcomes, model award criteria beneath each outcome, standard reporting metrics beneath those.
- How buyers use it: the buyer selects an outcome relevant to the subject matter of the contract. The Cabinet Office guide encourages selecting a single outcome except on the largest contracts.
- Units, not money: the reporting metrics are counts, hours, litres, tonnes, square metres and pounds of direct spend. PPN 002 does not use monetary proxy values, and does not mention TOMs, which is a separate framework published by the Social Value Portal and required by many buyers outside central government.
- Additionality: social value must be over and above the core deliverables of the tender or the contract.
- Scope: procurements commenced under the Procurement Act 2023 by central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Mandatory for those commenced on or after 1 October 2025.
- Relation to PPN 06/20: PPN 002 replaces PPN 06/20 (September 2020) for procurements in scope from 1 October 2025. PPN 06/20 is not withdrawn and continues to apply to procurements commenced under its regime.
How CrowAgent uses this term
CrowMark applies the PPN 002 mission mapping with a rules-based engine, not through AI, so the same contract profile always produces the same missions and you can override them. The flow is: contract profile, then mission selection, then measure recommendations from a curated catalogue aligned to National TOMs conventions, then scoring computed in code, then AI-assisted narrative drafting for a person to review. It is not a full National TOMs implementation. The language model never computes a figure.
Read more
PPN 002 complete guide → missions, scoring methodology, common mistakes, and evidence requirements.