Columnist Kaleke Kolawole B Pillar of society usinesses have a collective responsibility to moral and whether the services they are going to buy, or the way they are ethical codes; this includes a responsibility to closing going to buy them, could secure these benefits for their area or disparities of inequality, alleviating climate change and stakeholders. supporting small to medium-sized enterprises, and voluntary, The act is a tool to help commissioners get more value for money community and social enterprise. out of procurement. It also encourages commissioners to engage The importance of social value in procurement is becoming with their local provider market or community to design better more apparent each day. At the heart of it, social value in services, often finding new and innovative solutions to challenging procurement is about ensuring that what we buy is problems. generating value and benefits for people, stakeholders and society. In June 2018, central government announced it would go further Now more than ever particularly in the and explicitly evaluate social value when awarding most major context of the Covid-19 pandemic there is a need to turn contracts. As part of the Social Value Act, government departments our efforts and attention towards improving social and will be expected to report on the social impact of their major environmental outcomes. contracts. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors refers to social The Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, value as the impact that a project or policy has on society, and Media & Sport (DCMS) have worked with departmental the value that these impacts have, both positive and negative. commercial and policy teams, and supplier representative The social value of a project is the net bodies, to develop a Social Value value generated to society (ie, net of Model, which commissioners can negative impacts). The term social use to better understand how to Social value involves a paradigm refers to the aggregation of the enact the Social Value Act. shift from valuing the contract to Government has defined social value individuals that make up society and giving greater value to the societal not as it is often framed to a type through a series of priority themes and collective benefit to society of impact. Social value captures a and policy outcomes (borrowing myriad of impacts, including on the from the UN Sustainable economy, the environment, health, Development Goals), which are education these are all valuable important to deliver through the products vital to society and to human lives. governments commercial activities. Social value requires us to rethink how scarce resources are The Social Value Model provides a comprehensive approach for allocated and used. It involves a paradigm shift from valuing departments and suppliers, and the objective is to streamline and the contract to giving greater value to the societal and standardise the procurement process. The model has been collective benefit to society. The UN Sustainable Development designed to seamlessly work into existing processes minimising Goals are widely adopted as a model to develop social value unexpected large changes and the impact for commercial teams mechanisms and compel commissioners and suppliers to widen and suppliers and provides a clear, systematic way to evaluate their positive impacts through investment, transformation and these policies in the award of a contract. regeneration. Social value doesnt compete with value for money; it Social value will be evaluated based on qualitative responses is an essential element of it. from bidders, and not on volumes. This means that larger suppliers The Public Services (Social Value) Act came into force on are not able to win on scale alone; all bidders are required to set 31 January 2013. It requires businesses that commission public out what they will deliver and how it will be delivered, and it is this services to consider ways in which they can secure and/or improve information that will be scored in bid evaluations. The minimum wider social, economic and environmental value. Before businesses weighting that should be applied to social value is 10%. begin the procurement process, commissioners should think about Procurement in market research provides information 52 Impact ISSUE 38 2022_pp52-53 Legal.indd 52 22/06/2022 16:25