Quick answer: Buyers are routinely accepting social value commitments at tender stage that bear no realistic relationship to the contract value, the supplier's capacity, or the local context. This is not suppliers gaming the system — it is buyers setting the conditions for that to happen. The fix starts in the specification, not the evaluation.
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The number on the page looks impressive. That is the problem.
A facilities management contract worth £2.4 million. A supplier commits to delivering £480,000 of social value annually, measured against the TOMS framework. Apprenticeships, volunteering hours, local spend, wellbeing programmes. The evaluators score it highly. The contract is awarded.
Eighteen months later, the contract manager asks for the social value report. What comes back is a spreadsheet with some estimated figures, a handful of volunteering hours from head office staff, and a note that the apprenticeship fell through because the candidate left.
This is not an isolated story. It is a pattern.
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Why buyers keep accepting undeliverable commitments
Social value evaluation under the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires buyers to consider how contracts can secure wider benefits. That is the right principle. The problem is in how most organisations have operationalised it.
When social value is scored as a percentage of quality marks — typically 10 to 20 percent — suppliers face a straightforward calculation. The more ambitious the commitment, the higher the score. There is often no ceiling, no verification mechanism at tender stage, and no meaningful link between the commitment and the contract structure.
Suppliers are rational actors. If committing to £500,000 of social value wins you a £2.4 million contract, you commit to £500,000 of social value. Whether it is deliverable is a problem for your contract manager two years from now.
Buyers, for their part, have often inherited social value frameworks they do not fully control, are under pressure to demonstrate social value outcomes, and lack the time or resource to stress-test commitments at evaluation stage.
The result is a market full of impressive tender responses and a pipeline of social value reports that nobody entirely believes.
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The specification is where this goes wrong
Most social value failures are baked in before a single tender is issued. Buyers write social value requirements that are outcome-shaped but input-vague. "Demonstrate commitment to local employment." "Support community wellbeing." "Provide apprenticeship opportunities."
These formulations invite suppliers to be creative. And creative, in this context, means unverifiable.
If you want a supplier to employ local people, define local. Define what proportion of the contract workforce you expect to be recruited from within a specified postcode or travel-to-work area. Define how that will be evidenced and at what intervals. If the contract does not generate enough labour demand to make that realistic, do not ask for it.
If you want apprenticeships, consider whether the contract duration, the trade, and the supplier's size actually support apprenticeship delivery. A 12-month contract with a specialist subcontractor does not. A five-year estate services contract with a large regional employer might.
Proportionality is not a concession to suppliers. It is a precondition for getting anything delivered.
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Evaluation criteria that reward ambition over credibility
The other lever is in how you score. If your social value evaluation rewards the size of the commitment rather than the credibility of the delivery plan, you will select for optimism rather than capability.
Consider shifting your scoring approach. Ask suppliers to evidence previous delivery of comparable commitments on comparable contracts. Require them to identify the specific roles, partners, and timelines through which they will deliver each commitment. Apply a ceiling to the social value percentage of contract value that you will consider credible, and make that ceiling explicit in the tender documents.
Some buyers are beginning to use pre-market engagement to test what is actually achievable in their local context before they write the requirements. That is exactly the right instinct.
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Contract management is not a recovery mechanism
There is a temptation to think that robust contract management will catch this. It will not. If the commitment was not deliverable when the contract was awarded, no amount of quarterly review meetings will make it deliverable. You will spend those meetings managing the gap between expectation and reality, and the supplier will spend them producing explanations.
Social value commitments need to be stress-tested at specification stage, challenged at evaluation stage, and written into the contract with specific, measurable milestones and clear consequences for non-delivery. Consequences that you are actually prepared to apply.
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The practical takeaway
Before your next tender goes out, take the social value requirements and ask one question: could a competent supplier of the size and type likely to bid for this contract actually deliver this, on this contract, in this place? If the honest answer is uncertain, revise the requirements before you issue. The time you spend now is considerably less than the time you will spend managing a social value shortfall in year two.