PPN 026: Is social value finally becoming a competitive advantage for social enterprises?

For years, social enterprises have been told that public procurement values social value.

Yet plenty have found themselves competing against much larger commercial organisations with bigger bid teams, deeper pockets and an impressive ability to produce 1,500 beautifully crafted words about social value by Friday afternoon.

I know, because I've been on the losing end of it.

I've led social enterprises where social value wasn't an add-on to what we did. It was the whole point. Creating employment opportunities, supporting people facing significant barriers, developing skills, working with communities and designing services around people who are too often excluded.

And I've still watched contracts go to large commercial organisations.

Talking to peers who have also run social enterprises, I know mine isn't an unusual experience.

That's why PPN 026 interests me.

Not because I think a new procurement policy will suddenly level the playing field, of course it won't.

But it could shift it.

Real impact. Clear value. Competitive advantage. PPN 026 could create a significant opportunity for social enterprises that know how to turn the social value they already deliver into a compelling commercial proposition.

Social value is becoming harder to ignore

Published by the Cabinet Office in August 2026, PPN 026 introduces a new Social Value Model for relevant central government procurements worth £1 million or more from 1 January 2027.

For contracts worth £1 million to under £5 million, social value must account for at least 10% of the evaluation.

At £5 million and above, that minimum doubles to 20%.

At 20%, social value isn't the worthy section at the back of the tender anymore.

It can materially affect who wins.

And that creates both an opportunity and a challenge for social enterprises.

Because being ALL social value isn't enough

I've deliberately capitalised ALL. Because this is the frustration.

You can be an organisation whose entire reason for existing is social impact and still lose the social value argument.

A social enterprise doesn't automatically score highly because its mission aligns beautifully with the policy.

An evaluator can only score what is relevant to the contract, evidenced and committed to in the response.

I've seen the difference between doing social value and bidding social value.

They are not the same thing.

"We exist to create employment opportunities for people facing barriers to work" might describe your organisation perfectly.

But a procurement response needs to go further:

• What will you deliver through this contract?

• For whom?

• Where?

• How many?

• By when?

• How will you measure it?

• What will be additional as a result of winning this work?

• And what difference will it make?

That's where social enterprises need to get much more commercially confident.

The new model plays into some genuine social enterprise strengths

PPN 026 places particular emphasis on good jobs, fair pay, skills and opportunities for people facing barriers to employment.

That includes groups such as young people not in education, employment or training, people transitioning from education into employment, people with long-term health

conditions or disabilities and care leavers.

For many social enterprises, this is familiar territory.

You may already employ people facing barriers to work.

You may already create progression routes, deliver training, recruit locally or design employment around people routinely excluded from the labour market.

You may also have something much harder for a large corporate to manufacture: deep relationships and credibility with the communities the contract is intended to benefit.

Don't undersell that.

But don't assume it speaks for itself either.

And please don't wait for the tender

This is probably the lesson I'd shout loudest.

Some of the most valuable work I've done in business development happened long before a procurement was published.

I've engaged early with commissioners, built relationships, developed rapport and credibility and helped people understand what we could bring before there was a live tender sitting in an inbox with a deadline attached.

That isn't about cosy relationships or circumventing procurement rules.

It's good business development.

PPN 026 explicitly expects contracting organisations to understand their markets, including whether SMEs and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations are operating within them, when developing their approach.

• Give them something to understand.

• Attend market engagement events.

• Respond to consultations.

• Talk to commissioners.

• Ask intelligent questions.

• Challenge requirements that could inadvertently exclude smaller providers.

• Share insight from the communities you work with.

• Don't introduce yourself for the first time when the tender lands.

You don't necessarily need to be the prime

This is another area where I think social enterprises can become much more strategic.

I've worked on both sides of the supply chain.

I've been the prime contractor, building supply chains and looking for organisations that could bring capability, reach or specialist expertise we didn't have ourselves.

And I've been the subbie, bringing exactly that expertise into somebody else's supply chain.

Both can be good business.

Because a £5 million contract doesn't necessarily mean:

"We're too small for this."

Large prime contractors bidding for those contracts will need credible ways of delivering their social value commitments.

A social enterprise with trusted community relationships, specialist expertise or a proven model for supporting a particular group may bring something extremely valuable to that bid.

So when a major procurement appears on the horizon, don't only ask: "Could we bid for this?" or even worse - discount the opportunity because it's big..

Ask:

"Who is likely to bid for this, what will they need to win it and why should they want us alongside them?"

That's a very different commercial conversation.

But let's not pretend PPN 026 fixes everything

I'd love to say increasing the weighting to 20% means social enterprises will finally start beating the big corporates at their own game.

It isn't that simple.

Large organisations still have advantages.

They have specialist bid teams. Procurement infrastructure. Data analysts. Established frameworks. Dedicated social value teams. Financial resilience. And the resources to pursue opportunities that smaller organisations sometimes simply cannot afford to chase.

Some are also very good at delivering social value.

This shouldn't become a lazy social enterprise good, big business bad argument.

The opportunity created by PPN 026 is not that social enterprises deserve to win.

It's that organisations creating genuine social value may have more opportunity to make that value count.

But only if they learn to compete for it.

So start getting ready now

Don't wait until January.

• Look at the outcomes you already create.

• Find the evidence behind them.

• Put numbers around them.

• Understand where you have genuine expertise and competitive advantage.

• Build relationships with commissioners before opportunities go live.

• Identify the primes and partners operating in the markets you want to enter.

• Get clearer about what you bring to a supply chain.

• Build a bank of credible social value evidence that can be tailored to individual contracts rather than copied and pasted from one tender to another.

Because the opportunity isn't simply to say: "We're a social enterprise. We create social value."

It's to be able to say:

"This is the additional value your public pound will buy if you choose us, this is how we'll deliver it and this is the evidence that shows we can."

I've been the social enterprise competing against the big corporate.

I've been the prime building the supply chain.

I've been the specialist organisation sitting within one.

And I've spent years developing opportunities before anyone gets anywhere near pressing submit.

From all of those perspectives, PPN 026 is worth paying attention to.

It won't hand social enterprises contracts.

But it may create a bigger opportunity for them to compete.

And I'd quite like to see more of them take it.

Ready to turn your social value into competitive advantage?

Whether you want to get procurement-ready, strengthen your social value proposition or work out where you fit as a prime, partner or specialist supplier, The Bid Edit can help you turn what you already do well into something commissioners and partners can understand, evaluate and buy.

Let's talk about where your next opportunity could come from.

info@the-bid-edit.com

0333 339 5005