Social Value in 2025

Written by David Allison - CEO & Founder of TheTalentPeople

This week, the big news was obviously the budget. Depending on your stance on a range of subjects, it’s highly likely we’ll all have different views on it. There is no doubt that issues such as RAAC lightweight concrete in schools is an issue we can all agree needs to be funded and resolved quickly. Individuals’ positions on other areas such as National Insurance rates or the £40m identified for foundation and shorter apprenticeships will more likely draw a wider range of views. 

While most of the focus in parliament and the media has been on the budget, this week was also supposed to see the introduction of the Procurement Act 2023. Last month, however, this was delayed until 24th February 2025. ‘So what has that got to do with social value?’- I hear you cry! Well, it’s all to do with MEAT. Obviously. 

In this case, however, MEAT is not a source of protein, but an abbreviation which stands for ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’. At present, public-sector tenders are evaluated on this basis. MEAT simply reflects the fact that the most economically, or financially, best bid wins. That doesn’t mean the cheapest, but it means that every part of a bid has to be evaluated through the s of finance. The Procurement Act changes this evaluation to MAT – Most Advantageous Tender. So, whilst money is still important, there will now be far more focus on wider community benefit. The Act requires buyers to ‘maximise public benefit’. Defining this can be a challenge, but the catchy title PPN 06/20 helps to set out the five Social Value themes and eight associated Policy Outcomes that have been used to date. 

One reason that the new Government has given for the delay is that it wants to update the current National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) to ensure that it is ‘a mission-led procurement regime…applying the full potential of public procurement to deliver value for money, economic growth and social value’. So, although social value is not explicitly in the act, it is likely that the concept of MAT will be expanded more explicitly. 

So, from next year, every organisation which is bidding for central Government tenders, or is in the supply chain for those tenders, is going to need to demonstrate as part of their bid how they will address ‘MAT’ – the PPN 06/20 is a pretty good starting point. A good deal of the actions it sets outfall directly within the scope of education, training or wider future talent activities. They include: 

• Create employment opportunities, particularly for those who face barriers to employment and/or who are located in deprived areas. 

• Create employment and training opportunities, particularly for people in industries with known skills shortages or in high-growth sectors. 

• Support educational attainment relevant to the contract, including training schemes that address skills gaps and result in recognised qualifications. 

• Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support employment and skills opportunities in high-growth sectors. 

• Support disabled people in developing new skills relevant to the contract, including through training schemes that result in recognised qualifications. 

• Support in-work progression to help people, including those from disadvantaged or minority groups, to move into higher-paid work by developing new skills relevant to the contract. 

To support an organisation's approach to Social Value, it’s necessary to have a Social Value Model; broadly creating a measurement framework around your approach. The benefit of many of the actions set out above is that they are relatively simple to set out in terms of objectives, intended benefit and then to track outcomes across the life of a project. 

The Procurement Act covers many more areas, and overall is intended to create a simpler and more flexible system – you can read about it here 

If you’d like to explore more about our approach to Social Value Models, and Impact reporting, let's talk. You can get in touch with us here