The Social Value You Can Actually Deliver in Care Tenders

Social value in care tenders is no longer a warm paragraph bolted on at the end of a bid. It is scored, weighted and, once you win, contractually enforced, and at a typical social value weighting of around 10% of the marks it is frequently the margin between winning and losing. The providers who win do not promise the most; they promise proportionate, additional and locally relevant social value they can genuinely deliver and evidence, because every commitment becomes a binding KPI that is monitored long after the contract is awarded.

At a glance

• Social value is usually worth around 10% of the marks in a care tender, and in a close result it often decides who wins.
• The legal foundation is the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which requires public bodies to consider how a service procurement can improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of the area.
• Central government uses a Social Value Model with a minimum 10% weighting. From 1 January 2027 that minimum rises to 20% for central-government contracts worth £5m or more (10% for £1m to 5m) and narrows to good jobs and skills, but it binds central government only.
• Councils and NHS bodies procure under the Procurement Act 2023 and set their own weightings, commonly around 10% and sometimes up to about 25%, often measured through National TOMs and the Social Value Portal.
• The NHS has required a minimum 10% weighting for net zero and social value since April 2022, insists on additionality, and turns commitments into binding contractual requirements.
• The Social Value Portal reports more than £32bn of social value delivered and validated through National TOMs, with median delivery against commitments at 100%, so hollow promises stand out.
• The social value that wins is deliverable, additional, local, measurable and owned by a named person; over-promising is exposed later in contract monitoring.

What is social value, and why it decides care tenders now

Ask 10 providers what is social value and many will describe corporate charity or a staff fundraising day. In procurement the meaning is narrower and far more demanding. Social value is the additional economic, social and environmental benefit a contract generates for the local area, over and above the care service being purchased. It is the extra good that would not have happened without this contract, landing with the people and place it serves.

That is why social value is not the same as your CSR or ESG activity. Corporate responsibility is voluntary and rarely measured against a contract. Social value in tenders is scored at bid stage, written into the award decision, and then monitored as a set of binding obligations. Because the marks are frequently close, a well-built response can lift you above a technically similar competitor, and a weak one can hand them the contract. Treating it as a compliance afterthought is an expensive mistake for a care provider.

How much is social value worth in a tender?

For most care tenders the honest answer is around 10% of the marks, occasionally more. Central government works to a Social Value Model, first set out in Procurement Policy Note 06/20, with a minimum 10% weighting. From 1 January 2027 that central-government minimum rises to 20% for contracts worth £5m or more and 10% for contracts between £1m and 5m, with the model narrowed to 2 outcomes covering good jobs and skills.

The next point is where providers lose money: that 2027 change applies to central government only. It does not bind local councils, the NHS, schools or housing associations, who continue to run broader social value frameworks with several themes. Councils are not legally required to weight social value at 10%; they set their own weightings, and many simply mirror the central-government minimum voluntarily, with some going up to about 25%. A strong, realistic offer often adds up to around 20% of the contract value, but an excessive figure invites extra evaluator scrutiny and can be marked down as non-credible. Proportionality is itself scored.

Which rules apply to your care bid?

The regime depends on what is being bought and by whom, so check before you write. The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, and the National Procurement Policy Statement of February 2025 applies to contracting authorities in England, including councils and NHS bodies, who must have regard to it. Adult social care commissioned by a council sits under this regime, so the Procurement Act 2023 governs social value in most council care contracts.

Clinical, community and mental health services are different. NHS healthcare services of that kind are commissioned under the Provider Selection Regime, in force since January 2024, whose key award criteria explicitly include social value. So one organisation can face different rulebooks depending on the service. The picture also changes across the nations. Wales has the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023, whose socially responsible procurement duties become operational in 2026 and reinforce the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Scotland uses the language of community benefits under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, where a Sustainable Procurement Duty applies to all regulated procurements and community benefit requirements must be considered and stated for contracts worth £4m or more. If you bid in Scotland, write about community benefits, not social value or TOMs.

What evaluators actually score in a social value method statement

A social value method statement is not judged on ambition, but on whether the benefit is real, relevant and provable. Additionality comes first: the benefit must go beyond business as usual and beyond what the contract already requires, evidenced against a stated baseline. If you cannot describe your starting point, you cannot show that anything is additional, and the claim collapses.

Evaluators then look for relevance to this specific contract, cohort and place, and a local focus so the benefit lands in the contract's own community, particularly in areas of deprivation. They want measurability: specific metrics, targets and, where the buyer uses it, National TOMs measures with their proxy values. They test deliverability, meaning the commitment is resourced, credible and proportionate to the contract value and your size. They expect monitoring and governance, because commitments are binding and usually reported quarterly, and a named accountable person for each one rather than a vague reference to the organisation. Hit those points and your response reads as a plan; miss them and it reads as a wish list.

Why copying a large contractor's commitments loses marks

The commonest failure is lifting a national contractor's pledges into a small or medium provider's bid: net zero by a distant date, six-figure local spend, dozens of apprenticeships. An evaluator sees in seconds that the resource behind those numbers does not exist, and an untenable promise is marked non-credible. Ambition you cannot fund does not gain marks; it loses them.

The next trap is counting business as usual or statutory duties as social value. Paying staff, training them to required standards or meeting the specification are not additional, and claiming them is the single most common scoring killer. Close behind sit confusing CSR or ESG with contractual social value, offering no baseline so nothing can be shown to be additional, providing no measurement or National TOMs alignment, naming no owner and no monitoring plan, and chasing every theme instead of a few that genuinely fit the cohort and locality. There is also a trap specific to 2026 and 2027: assuming the stripped-down central-government model, with its 2 themes, governs a council or NHS care bid. It does not, and answering the wrong framework signals that you have not read the buyer's. Worst of all is over-promising then under-delivering: binding commitments are checked in monitoring, and being caught damages your remedies position, your reputation and your win rate on the next bid.

Social value examples for care providers you can actually deliver

Deliverable social value examples for care providers are rarely grand, and that is the point. Frame each as a baseline, a modest additional target, a named owner, how you will evidence it, and, where the buyer uses proxy values, the value it represents. On employment, recruit locally and ring-fence a share of new care roles for people who are long-term unemployed, care leavers, ex-offenders or people with disabilities, working through Jobcentre Plus, a local college or an employability charity. These carry the highest proxy values, so a small number of genuine placements can outscore a large but hollow spend pledge.

On skills, offer Adult Care Worker (Level 2) and Lead Adult Care Worker (Level 3) apprenticeships, the Care Certificate, work placements and T Levels with a local college, and commit to a figure you can staff, for example 2 apprenticeships in year 1 rather than 50. Real Living Wage accreditation and a genuine staff wellbeing offer count too. For service users and the community, run befriending and anti-loneliness schemes, intergenerational and dementia-friendly activities, and partnerships with local voluntary and community organisations. Direct a share of your supply chain spend to local small businesses too. Keep environmental commitments proportionate: optimise domiciliary care rounds to cut mileage and emissions, reduce single-use PPE waste and recycle. Staff volunteering hours round out a credible offer.

The proxy values show how deliverable becomes measurable, and they are illustrative only, because each council customises its own figures. As a rough guide, employing a local person for a year can be valued at around £32,000, supporting someone who was long-term unemployed into work at around £20,000, supporting a care leaver aged 16 to 25 at around £15,000, a week of a Level 2 to 4 apprenticeship at around £216, and an hour of staff volunteering at around £17.

Proportionality and life after award: why deliverable wins

The reason deliverable beats impressive is that the promise does not end at award; it becomes a contract term. Commitments are typically monitored quarterly, and the NHS is explicit that existing efforts cannot be counted and pledges become binding contractual requirements. The Social Value Portal's State of Social Value reporting (October 2025) shows median delivery against commitments running at 100% and a typical social value add of around 16% of contract value, which points to a clear conclusion: winners generally deliver what they promised, so a provider who over-reached is easy to spot when the reports land.

So size your offer to what you can resource and defend. A total of around 20% of contract value reads as strong and credible; a figure far beyond that reads as a risk. Give every commitment a baseline, a target, a named owner, a measure and a reporting rhythm, and you have a social value response that scores at evaluation and survives monitoring. That combination, proportionate and provable rather than grand and fragile, separates the bids that win from those that merely promise.

FAQ

Is social value compulsory in care tenders?

In practice, yes. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires public bodies to consider economic, social and environmental wellbeing when they procure services, and the Procurement Act 2023 keeps social value central for councils and NHS bodies in England. The NHS has required a minimum 10% weighting for net zero and social value since April 2022. Expect it to be scored in almost every care tender you enter.

How much is social value usually weighted in a care contract?

Around 10% of the marks is the common figure, though some councils go higher, up to about 25%. From 1 January 2027 the central-government minimum rises to 20% for contracts worth £5m or more, but that change applies to central government only and does not set the weighting for a council or NHS care contract. Always work from the weighting stated in the specific tender documents.

What is additionality, and why does it matter so much?

Additionality means benefit that goes beyond business as usual and beyond what the contract already requires, measured against a clear baseline. It matters because it is the first thing evaluators test, and claiming your normal operations or statutory duties as social value is the most common reason responses lose marks. Without a stated baseline, you cannot prove anything is additional, so start every commitment by describing where you are now.

Do the 2027 central-government changes apply to my council or NHS care contract?

No. The move to a 20% minimum and a narrower model from 1 January 2027 applies to central-government contracts only. Councils, the NHS, schools and housing associations continue to run their own, usually broader, social value frameworks. Assuming the central-government model governs a local care bid is a genuine trap, and answering the wrong framework tells the evaluator you have not read theirs.

What is National TOMs?

National TOMs stands for Themes, Outcomes and Measures, the most widely used framework for measuring social value, supported by the Social Value Portal. It attaches proxy values to activities so that commitments can be counted in pounds and tracked after award. The Social Value Portal reports that more than £32bn of social value has been delivered and validated through it. Remember that each council customises its own measures and values, so read the framework named in your tender rather than assuming a national default.

Social value has become one of the few parts of a care tender where a smaller, local provider can genuinely outscore a national competitor, but only by promising what it can prove and deliver. Build your response from a baseline, a named owner and a credible target, and you turn a 10% weighting from a risk into an advantage.