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An insight into the Government’s new Social Value Model from our in-house Social Value SME, Sarah Mohan
In public sector procurement, social value has become a decisive factor. It now makes up 10–20% of evaluation scores, which can tip the balance when bids are otherwise neck-and-neck.
Yet too often, social value is treated as a tick-box exercise: a few lines about apprenticeships, a charity partnership, or recycling initiatives. Commissioners are looking for more than that.
Social value isn’t just about compliance—it’s about showing how your organisation can make a meaningful impact while delivering the contract. When done well, it can be the difference between a good bid and a winning one.
The Government’s Social Value Model
The Government’s Social Value Model has been in place since February 2025, and from October 2025 it becomes mandatory for central government procurements.
The model focuses on specific outcomes, including:
- Reducing economic inequality through jobs, skills, and supply chain opportunities
- Fighting climate change and contributing to net-zero targets
- Promoting equal opportunity and supplier diversity
- Improving wellbeing and strengthening communities
In short, bidders will need to do more than list generic pledges—they’ll need to show how their delivery approach creates measurable impact in these areas.
Embedding Social Value into your Core Offer
The strongest bids are the ones where social value feels like part of the core service, not something bolted on. For example:
- Facilities management providers connecting recruitment and training to local skills pipelines, while building diverse supply chains.
- Catering firms tackling food waste by partnering with suppliers and redistributing surplus food locally.
- Service models designed with sustainability, wellbeing, and net-zero in mind from the start.
When social value is aligned to the buyer’s own priorities, it stops being an add-on and becomes part of your unique value proposition.
Crafting Winning Responses
Even organisations with strong social value programmes sometimes struggle to reflect them clearly in bids. Navigating commissioner priorities, addressing complex questions, and aligning with government targets can be daunting, with common challenges including:
- Interpreting commissioner priorities and matching them to the model.
- Evidencing commitments with credible data.
- Avoiding generic language that undersells the impact being delivered.
The key is to translate activity into outcomes, showing both what you do and the tangible difference it makes.
Takeaways for Bidders
- Get to know the Social Value Model and what it means for your sector.
- Tailor commitments to commissioner priorities—avoid one-size-fits-all promises.
- Build social value into delivery, rather than treating it as an add-on.
- Use data and clear metrics to demonstrate impact in a way evaluators can score with confidence.
Social value is here to stay—and its importance is only growing. Organisations that treat it as a genuine part of their service delivery, rather than a compliance exercise, will be best placed to succeed.
How 50D Can Help
At 50 Degrees, we work with clients to turn social value from a checklist into a compelling win theme. Our approach is designed to help you stand out in competitive evaluations and achieve the highest possible scores—we regularly achieve 100% in this area.
We support you by:
- Identifying contract-specific outcomes that resonate with commissioners.
- Aligning commitments with priorities set out in the Government’s Social Value Model.
- Building measurable, credible metrics to evidence your impact.
- Crafting clear, persuasive narratives and visuals that evaluators can score with confidence.
This method has supported over £3bn in client wins across facilities management, catering, and other complex service sectors.
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