Quick answer: Collecting social value commitments at tender stage and filing them is not measurement — it is theatre. Useful frameworks specify what evidence suppliers must provide, when they must provide it, and what happens contractually if they do not.
I have reviewed a lot of social value frameworks over the past few years. The pattern is depressingly consistent. The tender asks suppliers to commit to outcomes — apprenticeships, local spend, volunteering hours, whatever the authority has decided to weight. Suppliers write confident things. Someone scores the responses. A winner is appointed. The commitments go into a contract schedule and are never looked at again.
Then, three years later, someone in the council asks what social value the contract actually delivered. Nobody knows. The supplier certainly does not have the data. The contract manager moved on. The original tender evaluators have no idea what was promised.
This is not a supplier problem. It is a procurement design problem.
The failure starts at specification stage
Most social value questions are written as open invitations: Tell us how you will deliver social value. Suppliers respond with aspirational narratives because that is what the question asks for. Nobody has defined what a measurable commitment looks like, so nobody submits one.
The fix is straightforward but requires more work upfront. Before you write the question, decide which outcomes you actually want to track. Not a long list — two or three things that matter to your organisation and your community. Then write the question to elicit specific, quantified commitments: number of apprenticeship starts, percentage of contract value spent within a defined postcode area, number of hours of targeted employment support. If you cannot describe how you would verify it, do not ask for it.
Scoring commitments you cannot verify rewards good writers
If your evaluation panel cannot distinguish between a commitment that is deliverable and one that sounds good, your social value scoring is measuring written communication skills. That is not nothing, but it is not social value.
Before any tender goes out, ask yourself: if a supplier commits to this, what evidence would prove they delivered it? If the answer is unclear, the commitment is not ready to be evaluated. The Procurement Act 2023 places greater emphasis on outcomes and contract performance — vague social value promises are increasingly difficult to defend if challenged.
Some authorities have started running social value commitments past their contract management teams before evaluation criteria are finalised. The question is simple: can we actually check this? It is a useful filter.
The contract schedule is where social value goes to die
I have seen social value commitments buried in schedule seven of a contract, with no KPIs, no reporting frequency, and no consequence for non-delivery. Suppliers are not unreasonable: if nobody asks, they prioritise everything else.
If social value matters, it belongs in the performance management regime, not in a schedule that nobody opens. That means:
- Defined reporting periods (quarterly is usually right for most contracts)
- A specified evidence format — not a narrative, actual data
- A named point of contact on the supplier side who is accountable
- A clear link to contract review meetings
- A remedy or escalation path if commitments are not being met
This does not need to be elaborate. A single page in the contract management plan, consistently applied, is worth more than a sophisticated framework that contract managers do not use.
UKRPSS and social value reporting are starting to converge
Organisations working toward UKRPSS accreditation are increasingly expected to demonstrate that their social value processes are substantive rather than procedural. Accreditation reviewers want to see evidence of delivery, not just evidence of a policy. That means the gap between what your framework promises and what your contract management actually captures is becoming a reputational and compliance risk, not just an operational nuisance.
Your suppliers need to know what good looks like before they price it
One thing that supplier development work consistently reveals: smaller suppliers — the ones most likely to generate genuine local social value — are the least equipped to track and report it. They will deliver apprenticeships. They will buy locally. They will not necessarily record it in a way your system can use.
If you want quality social value data, you need to tell suppliers exactly what you need before they submit their tender, not after award. That means example evidence formats in your tender documents, not vague references to a framework document on your website.
Practical takeaway
Before your next tender goes out, identify one person in your organisation who will own social value performance for that contract through its life. If you cannot name that person, your measurement framework is not ready. The commitment at award is the easy part — the value is in the delivery, and delivery requires someone watching.