Social Value Intentions & Procurement Realities

Over the past few years, the UK has made significant progress in embedding social value into public procurement. The intent is clear and widely shared: public spending should deliver broader socio-economic and environmental benefits for communities across the country.

With the updated Social Value Model and the wider reforms introduced through the National Procurement Policy Statement and the Procurement Act 2023, that ambition is now more clearly articulated than ever.

The opportunity — and the challenge — lies in bridging the gap between intention and reality.

Strong Intentions, Complex Operating Environments

Social value policy is, by design, ambitious. It seeks to influence behaviour, shape markets, and unlock long-term benefits beyond the immediate scope of a contract. This ambition is both necessary and welcome.

However, procurement operates within complex, varied, and often highly specialised markets. Suppliers differ widely in size, maturity, geography, labour models, and supply-chain reach. What is realistic and impactful in one context may be impractical or misaligned in another.

Bridging social value intentions and procurement realities therefore requires more than compliance. It requires translation — turning policy aims into requirements that reflect how markets actually function.

Where Gaps Commonly Appear

In practice, misalignment tends to emerge in a few familiar areas:

• Uniform expectations across diverse contracts, despite very different delivery models

• Outcomes that are theoretically valuable but operationally distant from a supplier’s core activity

• Limited differentiation between tiers of the supply chain, particularly in large programmes

• Commitments designed for evaluation rather than delivery, creating risk at contract stage

These gaps are rarely the result of poor intent. More often, they reflect the difficulty of applying a single framework across a wide range of procurement scenarios.

Alignment as the Enabling Principle

The most effective social value outcomes emerge when alignment is treated as a core design principle.

This alignment operates on three levels:

1. Alignment with the market

Understanding how a market is structured — its cost base, labour intensity, geographic footprint, and capacity for innovation — allows social value requirements to be shaped in ways that suppliers can genuinely deliver.

2. Alignment with supplier influence

Social value is strongest where suppliers can exercise real control. Commitments linked to workforce development, local spending, environmental management, innovation, or community partnerships are far more sustainable when they align with existing operational levers.

3. Alignment across the supply chain

In complex sectors such as renewable energy, infrastructure, and large-scale programmes, social value is rarely delivered by a single organisation. Coordinated approaches across multiple tiers help distribute responsibility fairly and unlock cumulative impact.

From Policy to Practice

Bridging intention and reality does not require diluting ambition. On the contrary, it strengthens it.

When social value requirements are:

• Relevant to the contract

• Proportionate to the market

• Designed with delivery in mind

• Supported by early engagement

• Tracked through structured contract management

they move beyond aspiration and become credible, measurable, and repeatable.

This is particularly important as the UK continues to scale activity in sectors with long-term pipelines and extended supply chains, where early design decisions can significantly influence the impact ultimately achieved.

A Shared Responsibility

Bridging social value intentions and procurement realities is not the responsibility of buyers alone, nor of suppliers in isolation. It is a shared endeavour involving policymakers, contracting authorities, advisers, and delivery partners.

The policy direction is strong.
The ambition is right.

Our collective task is to ensure that social value is shaped in a way that fits the markets we buy from — enabling it to be delivered with confidence, consistency, and lasting benefit for UK communities.

Author: Omar Hadjel MCIM