Social Value & Sustainability in Care Tenders: How to Score
Social value and sustainability now decide care tenders, not just tick a box. What the Procurement Act 2023 changed and how to win the marks.
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Social Value and Sustainability in Care Tenders: How to Win the Marks
Social value and sustainability have stopped being the box-ticking section at the back of a care tender. They are now scored marks, sometimes a fifth of the whole evaluation, and increasingly the difference between winning and coming second.
For a long time providers treated these questions as a formality: a paragraph about recycling, a line about supporting the local community, and back to the care. That approach now loses real points. Commissioners score social value and sustainability against defined criteria, ask for measurement and reporting, and reject answers that could have been written for anywhere.
This guide explains what changed in the law and policy, what social value and sustainability actually mean in a care contract, how commissioners score them, and how to write answers that earn the marks. It uses live council tenders as worked examples, but the principles apply to any health and social care bid, anywhere in the UK.
Why social value and sustainability now decide care tenders
The legal weight behind these questions has grown, and that is why the marks have grown with it.
The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 started it, requiring commissioners of service contracts to consider how a procurement could improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of their area. The Procurement Act 2023, in force since February 2025, raised the bar: authorities must now have regard to the importance of maximising public benefit, a higher standard than simply considering it. The National Procurement Policy Statement published on 13 February 2025 made social and economic value, and net zero, national priorities that contracting authorities are expected to pursue.
The Act also changed the winning test. Under the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015, contracts were awarded on the Most Economically Advantageous Tender, which in practice leaned on cost and technical compliance. The Procurement Act 2023 replaced this with the Most Advantageous Tender, which lets authorities define "advantageous" more broadly to include local job creation, environmental impact and support for smaller providers. In central government, a minimum 10% weighting for social value still applies. Across local government, where most care is commissioned, weightings are set by each authority and are trending upward, with 20% now common and often the deciding factor between close bids.
What social value actually means in a care contract
Social value is the wider benefit your service creates beyond the care itself, and commissioners group it into recognisable themes.
Most frameworks, whether the government's Social Value Model or a council's own version, cover the same ground: tackling economic inequality through local jobs, apprenticeships and spend with local and smaller suppliers; creating opportunity through inclusive recruitment and support for people who face barriers to work; and improving community wellbeing. In care specifically, that translates into concrete commitments: paying the real Living Wage, recruiting local carers and people with lived experience or disabilities, offering work placements, buying from local businesses, and running activities that connect the people you support to their community.
The important shift is measurement. Commissioners increasingly expect social value to be quantified and reported, often using the National Social Value TOM System, a standardised set of Themes, Outcomes and Measures that attaches a proxy financial value to each commitment and includes validation to guard against greenwashing. A promise to "support the local community" scores poorly. A commitment to create two supported-employment placements a year, spend a defined percentage locally, and report against named measures scores.
What sustainability means in a care service
Sustainability in a care tender is not a general statement of good intentions. It is a set of measurable environmental actions embedded in how the service runs.
At the national level, the anchor is the Carbon Reduction Plan, required under PPN 006 (previously PPN 06/21) for bidders on major government contracts, committing the organisation to net zero by 2050 with a plan showing how it will get there. Most councils go further and faster: many declared climate emergencies and set local net zero targets well ahead of 2050, and they expect suppliers to help them meet those. Brighton & Hove, for example, is working towards carbon neutrality by 2030 and asks bidders to show how their service supports it.
In a day service or a home care round, that means specifics: encouraging staff to walk, cycle or use public transport rather than drive; reducing and reusing materials and applying circular-economy thinking; disposing of PPE and clinical waste responsibly; using outdoor and green spaces to support wellbeing; and monitoring, reviewing and reporting environmental impact against named indicators. The best answers show sustainability designed into the day-to-day operation, not bolted on.
How commissioners score them
Weightings vary widely, which is the first thing to check on any tender, because it tells you how much effort each answer deserves.
Central government applies a minimum 10% weighting to social value. Local authorities set their own, and the range is real. Some weight social value and sustainability lightly; others make them a fifth or more of the total. In Brighton & Hove's day opportunities tender for adults with learning disabilities, social value is worth 10% and sustainability 10%, a combined 20% of a 100% quality evaluation. Whatever the number, the answers are usually scored on a defined scale, from 0 to 4 or 0 to 5, with the top score reserved for responses that are comprehensive, measurable, and clearly deliverable.
Two features of the scoring catch providers out. First, commissioners score the credibility of delivery, not the ambition of the promise, so an unrealistic commitment scores lower than a modest one you can evidence. Second, they increasingly ask for a plan or action plan rather than prose, with named leads, resources, activities and outcomes, because a plan can be held to account after award. If the tender asks for measurement and reporting and you do not provide it, you cap your own score.
Before you write: a quick self-check
Before drafting either answer, run these checks. If the answer is no, that is where the marks are leaking.
- Do we know the weighting? Find the exact percentage for social value and for sustainability before you decide how much to write.
- Have we read the buyer's own priorities? Councils publish social value frameworks and net zero targets. Answering against them, not against a generic template, is most of the score.
- Can we name a lead for each commitment? A named person responsible signals the commitment is real.
- Is every commitment measurable? If you cannot say how much, by when, and how you will report it, rewrite it until you can.
- Is it local? Commitments researched for this city or county beat national statements every time.
- Do we have a Carbon Reduction Plan or an equivalent? For larger contracts you may need one, and even where you do not, it strengthens the answer.
If those are all yes, you are ready to write answers that score. If several are no, that is the work to do first, and where a Pre-Submission Review or Score My Response will find the gap before an evaluator does.
What a strong social value answer contains
A top-scoring social value answer reads like a plan someone could audit, not a statement of values.
It names the beneficiaries and the lead responsible for delivery. It sets out the inputs you will commit, the activities you will run, and the outcomes they will achieve, and it makes each one measurable with a number and a timeframe. It ties commitments to the buyer's area: local recruitment in their labour market, spend with their local suppliers, activities that connect people to their community. Where the tender uses a measurement framework such as the National TOMs, it answers in that framework and reports against its measures. And it draws on things a care provider genuinely does: paying the real Living Wage, offering supported employment to people with disabilities or long-term unemployed residents, creating apprenticeships, and reducing social isolation for the people it supports.
The discipline is the same one behind any high-scoring method statement, which our guide to method statements that win care contracts sets out: name the mechanism, make it measurable, and show the benefit to the commissioner.
What a strong sustainability answer contains
A strong sustainability answer shows environmental practice built into the service, with evidence and a way to measure it.
It opens with your commitment, ideally anchored to a Carbon Reduction Plan or a net zero target, and then makes it concrete for the service being tendered. It covers travel and transport, because in care these are often the biggest emissions: how you will reduce car journeys, support active travel and plan efficient rounds. It covers waste and materials, including reuse, recycling and responsible disposal of PPE. It shows how you use physical space and green space to support both wellbeing and lower impact. And it commits to monitoring, reviewing and reporting environmental performance against named indicators, so the commitment can be tracked through the contract. Crucially, it aligns to the buyer's own targets: a council working to net zero by 2030 wants to see how you help it get there, not a generic pledge for 2050.
The mistakes that lose these marks
Five recur across care bids, and all are avoidable.
The first is the generic answer, written for anywhere, that ignores the buyer's area and priorities. The second is the unmeasurable promise, full of commitment and empty of numbers, dates or named leads. The third is ambition without a plan, where the scale of the pledge outruns any credible means of delivering it, which scores lower than a modest, deliverable commitment. The fourth is treating the two questions as one, or as an afterthought, when together they can be a fifth of the marks. The fifth is greenwashing: unverifiable environmental claims that measurement frameworks are specifically designed to expose.
Underneath all five is the same habit that loses marks everywhere in a bid: describing intentions rather than evidencing mechanisms. If a sentence says you are committed to the community without saying how, by how much, and how you will prove it, that is a sentence quietly costing you a point.
A worked example: how the marks stack up
Take Brighton & Hove's day opportunities tender for adults with learning disabilities and complex needs. Social value is scored at 10% and sustainability at 10%, so a fifth of the entire quality evaluation sits in two questions that many providers still treat as filler. The Council asks for a social value action plan with named leads, resources, activities and outcomes tied to its own published outcomes, and a sustainability answer that shows measurable practice aligned to its 2030 carbon-neutral target. You can read the full breakdown in our Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities analysis.
The lesson generalises. A provider that scores full marks on care and drops points on social value and sustainability can lose to a provider that is merely good on care but excellent, specific and local on the wider benefit. Because these weightings are rising across the sector, the gap that closes or opens on these two questions is only getting wider.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a minimum social value weighting on care tenders? Central government applies a minimum 10% weighting to social value. Local authorities, which commission most care, set their own weighting, and it varies widely. It is commonly around 20% and rising, so always check the exact figure on the tender rather than assuming, because it tells you how much the answer is worth.
What is the difference between MEAT and MAT? MEAT, the Most Economically Advantageous Tender under the old rules, leaned on cost and technical compliance. The Procurement Act 2023 introduced the Most Advantageous Tender, which lets commissioners define value more broadly to include social and environmental benefit, local jobs and support for smaller providers. In practice it gives social value and sustainability more room to decide awards.
Do I need a Carbon Reduction Plan to bid for care contracts? For major government contracts a Carbon Reduction Plan is required under PPN 006, committing to net zero by 2050. Many care contracts sit below that threshold, but councils increasingly ask for environmental commitments aligned to their own, often earlier, net zero targets, so a plan strengthens your answer even where it is not mandatory.
What is the National TOMs framework? The National Social Value TOM System is a standardised set of Themes, Outcomes and Measures used by many commissioners to score and report social value consistently. It attaches a proxy financial value to commitments and includes validation to prevent greenwashing. Where a tender uses it, answer in its measures rather than in general prose.
How much of a care bid is social value and sustainability worth? It depends entirely on the tender. It can be as little as a few per cent or as much as a fifth of the whole evaluation. On a 100% quality contract, two questions at 10% each already account for 20% of the marks, which is often enough to decide who wins.
Can a bid writer help with social value and sustainability answers? Yes. These answers reward measurable, locally researched commitments with named leads and a reporting mechanism, which is exactly what a specialist care-sector bid writer builds. A pre-submission review also checks that your commitments are credible and evidenced before an evaluator scores them.
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Not sure your social value and sustainability answers are scoring what they should?
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Related reading
- How to write method statements that win care contracts
- Brighton & Hove Day Opportunities Lot 4: how to win a place
- What CQC rating do you need to bid for care contracts?
- Score My Response: check your answer before you submit
- Bid writing for UK care providers