Social Value Is Not a Procurement Checkbox — and the Difference Matters Enormously.
By Upturn Enterprise · January 2025
Since the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, social value has become a fixture of public procurement in the UK. Commissioners are required to consider how contracts can improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of their area. And on the surface, this looks like progress.
But spend time with the people who are supposed to benefit from social value commitments — the residents of the communities where large contracts are delivered — and a rather different picture emerges. Too often, the social value attached to major contracts amounts to a set of aspirational statements in a tender document and a few tokenistic activities that bear little relationship to what the community actually needs.
The Problem With Checkbox Social Value
Checkbox social value has several distinguishing features. It is designed around what is easy to measure and report, rather than what is genuinely valuable. It tends to focus on inputs and outputs — number of apprenticeships offered, number of work experience placements created — rather than outcomes: whether those apprenticeships led to sustained employment, whether those placements opened genuine career pathways.
It is also typically designed by the contracting organisation, for the contracting organisation — without meaningful input from the communities it claims to serve. And it is usually delivered as an adjunct to the main contract, rather than embedded in the way the contract itself is executed.
What Authentic Social Value Looks Like
Authentic social value delivery starts with a genuine question: what do the communities affected by this contract actually need? It requires the commissioning organisation to engage with those communities before designing its social value offer — and to be willing to adapt that offer based on what it hears.
It requires delivery through organisations with genuine community roots — not through the contracting organisation itself, which typically lacks the relationships, the expertise and the trust required to deliver effectively in disadvantaged communities. And it requires rigorous, transparent measurement against recognised frameworks — not self-reported data that serves the organisation’s narrative.
The Role of Social Enterprises Like Upturn
This is precisely where organisations like Upturn add value. We have spent over 20 years building the community relationships, the delivery expertise and the measurement infrastructure that authentic social value requires. We are not a box that a contractor can tick — we are a genuine delivery partner who can turn contractual commitments into real community outcomes.
Our work with GCHQ, MUSE Developments and others demonstrates what is possible when large organisations make a genuine commitment to social value and partner with organisations that have the community reach to deliver it. The outcomes — in terms of employment, enterprise, community confidence and economic activity — go far beyond what checkbox compliance ever achieves.
