PPN 026: What a Social Value Commitment Has to Survive
By Roman Bazelchuk | NEC Accredited Project Manager | APMG Project Planning and Control
Founder, NEC Planning Solutions Ltd
From 1 January 2027, social value on in-scope central government procurements carries a minimum 10 per cent weighting between £1 million and £5 million, and a minimum 20 per cent at £5 million and above. The model narrows to two outcomes, Good Jobs and Skills. On the larger contracts, at least one social value KPI is published centrally and reported annually.
Most of the commentary on PPN 026 has led with the 20 per cent. It is the wrong headline. The weighting doubled, which is significant, but weightings have moved before and bid teams have absorbed it. What has actually changed is that the menu is gone, and that the answer you write is now a number somebody publishes.
Under the previous model you could choose where to score. Five missions, a spread of outcomes beneath them, and an organisation strong on carbon or on community investment could build a respectable answer without ever committing to employment. That option no longer exists. PPN 026 has two outcomes and both are about jobs and skills, so a bidder with nothing to say about employment has nothing to say.
This piece is about what a commitment now has to survive, which is a different question from what the policy says. The policy is well covered elsewhere. What is not covered is the delivery end: what happens twelve months after award, when the KPI is reported and published, and somebody has to show that the thing promised in the bid actually happened. For the tender-writing side, that is in how to score higher on social value in construction tenders.
What PPN 026 changes, precisely
The Cabinet Office published PPN 026 on 5 August 2026. It applies to in-scope procurements commencing on or after 1 January 2027, and a procurement counts as commenced when the tender notice is published. In scope means central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Local government, the NHS and the wider public sector may adopt it, but are not required to.
The threshold moved a long way. The previous model applied from the procurement threshold of £139,688 including VAT. PPN 026 applies from £1 million including VAT, so a large number of smaller contracts fall out of the regime entirely while the ones that remain carry more weight.
The weighting is tiered rather than flat. A minimum of 10 per cent from £1 million to £5 million, a minimum of 20 per cent at £5 million and above, and buyers may go higher where it is relevant and proportionate. Where an absolute methodology such as price per quality point is used, the percentage applies to the non-price score.
And the model itself shrank. Two outcomes replace the previous five missions, delivered through six model award criteria. Good Jobs covers creating and retaining high quality jobs, fair pay and fair working conditions. Skills covers training, retraining, in-work progression and talent pipelines from underserved communities. Practitioner guidance and metrics are due in autumn 2026.
The narrowing matters more than the weighting
Doubling a weighting changes how much a good answer is worth. Removing the menu changes who can write one at all.
A contractor whose social value story has been built on carbon reduction, community donations, school engagement or supply chain diversity now finds that none of it scores. Those things remain worth doing and many buyers will still ask about them elsewhere in the tender, but under this model they sit outside the scoring. The government was explicit that it viewed the previous approach as a tick box exercise, and the narrowing is the correction.
That is a harder adjustment than it sounds, because employment commitments are the ones organisations have historically found hardest to make and easiest to fudge. It is straightforward to sponsor something. It is considerably harder to create a job, and harder still to create one for somebody facing a barrier to employment and then keep them in it. This is the difference between decorative and structural social value, set out at length in why most social value commitments fail the scoring test, and PPN 026 has quietly made the structural route compulsory.
What a commitment now has to survive
Here is the provision that should be changing how bids are written, and it is getting almost no attention. On contracts of £5 million or more, the buyer must set at least one social value KPI. Performance against it is published centrally and reported at least annually.
A bid commitment used to be a promise made once, scored once and then filed. Under PPN 026 it becomes a public performance record with an annual cadence. The sentence written by a bid manager in November becomes a number an operations director has to defend the following December, in a document anybody can read, including the client's next procurement team and your competitors.
That inverts the drafting problem. The old skill was writing a commitment that scored well. The new skill is writing one that scores well and can still be evidenced by somebody who did not write it. Those are not the same commitment, and the second is considerably narrower than the first.
It also exposes a structural weakness that most contractors have and few discuss. Social value is written by the bid team and delivered, if at all, by operations. The two functions are separated by the award and rarely joined by a handover. Under the old model that gap was invisible because nothing was reported. Under PPN 026 it is published.
The test to apply to your own commitment
Before a commitment goes into a bid, put it through the report you will have to write about it in a year. Four questions do most of the work.
Can you name the role? Not the intention, the role. A commitment that resolves to a job title, on this contract, in a named discipline, is reportable. A commitment to support employment in the region is not, because there is no unit to count.
Can you name who owns it after award? If the answer is the bid team, it will not be delivered, because the bid team will be on the next tender. If nobody in operations has accepted the commitment before submission, it is a promise with no owner.
Does the evidence already exist as a by-product of doing the thing? A commitment evidenced by payroll records, timesheets and monthly reports produces its own audit trail. One evidenced by a survey somebody has to remember to run will be reported late, thinly, or not at all.
And would you be comfortable if the report were read by a competitor? Because on the larger contracts it will be. That single question strips the optimism out of a social value answer faster than any internal review.
The two-model problem through 2027
One practical trap. PPN 026 applies to procurements commencing on or after 1 January 2027. Anything commenced before that date continues under the previous model, and buyers may also stay with it where transitioning would require disproportionate resources or invalidate market engagement already carried out. Some will transition early.
So for much of 2027 a bid team will be working two models at once, with different thresholds, different weightings and a different scoring structure, sometimes for the same client. Establish which model applies before drafting rather than after. An answer written to the wrong one is not a weak answer, it is an answer to a question nobody asked.
The view from the desk
I sit on the delivery side of this rather than the bid side, and from here the reporting requirement is the part that will hurt. Bid teams are good at writing commitments. Very few organisations are set up to prove one twelve months later, and almost none have been asked to do it in public.
My position is that a social value commitment should be scoped like a piece of work rather than drafted like a claim. Somebody should own it, it should carry a cost, it should appear on the delivery programme, and the evidence should fall out of running it rather than being assembled at the deadline. Where the commitment sits inside project delivery rather than alongside it, all of that follows. Where it sits alongside, none of it does.
And the narrowing to jobs and skills, whatever else it does, is honest. A job is the hardest thing on the old menu to fake and the easiest to verify. If the aim was to end the tick box exercise, restricting the model to the one outcome that leaves a payroll record was the effective way to do it.
Summary
PPN 026 applies from 1 January 2027 to in-scope central government procurements of £1 million or more. Minimum 10 per cent social value weighting to £5 million, minimum 20 per cent above it. Two outcomes, Good Jobs and Skills, across six model award criteria. Practitioner guidance follows in autumn 2026.
The narrowing matters more than the weighting, because there is nowhere else left to score. And on contracts of £5 million or more the commitment becomes a published KPI reported annually, so the drafting test is no longer whether it scores but whether it can still be evidenced by somebody who did not write it.
Download the commitment test
Two pages to run a draft commitment through before it goes into a bid: which model applies, whether the commitment is reportable, who owns it after award, whether the evidence is a by-product of the work, and how it reads once it is published. Free, direct download, no sign-up.
FAQ
What is PPN 026?
Procurement Policy Note 026, published by the Cabinet Office on 5 August 2026, setting a new Social Value Model for central government procurement. It replaces PPN 002 and applies to in-scope procurements commencing on or after 1 January 2027, for contracts of £1 million or more including VAT.
What weighting does social value carry under PPN 026?
A minimum of 10 per cent of the total score for contracts from £1 million to £5 million, and a minimum of 20 per cent for contracts of £5 million or more, both including VAT. Buyers may apply more where it is relevant and proportionate. Where an absolute methodology such as price per quality point is used, the percentage applies to the non-price score.
What are the two outcomes under PPN 026?
Good Jobs and Skills, delivered through six model award criteria. Good Jobs covers creating and retaining high quality jobs, fair pay and fair working conditions. Skills covers training, retraining, in-work progression and talent pipelines from underserved communities. The environmental, innovation and wellbeing themes in the previous model are not part of the scoring.
Does PPN 026 apply to local government and the NHS?
No. It applies to central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies. Local government, the NHS and other public sector buyers may choose to adopt the approach but are not required to, and many will continue with their own frameworks such as the National TOMs.
What happens after a contract is awarded?
On contracts of £5 million or more the buyer must set at least one social value KPI, and performance against it is published centrally and reported at least annually. A bid commitment therefore becomes a public performance record rather than a statement that is scored once and filed.
Which model applies to a procurement starting in late 2026?
The previous model, unless the buyer transitions early. PPN 026 applies to procurements commencing on or after 1 January 2027, with a procurement counted as commenced when the tender notice is published. Buyers may also stay with the old model where transitioning would require disproportionate resources or invalidate market engagement already undertaken.
About the author
Roman Bazelchuk is the Founder of NEC Planning Solutions Ltd, a UK project planning and controls consultancy supporting contractors with NEC programme compliance, compensation event assessments and live project controls. He is an NEC Accredited Project Manager and holds the APMG Project Planning and Control qualification, with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering.
NEC Planning Solutions provides contract-aware planning support through a QA-governed delivery model, helping project teams keep programmes accepted, current and commercially useful from tender through to live delivery.
Need a jobs-and-skills commitment that survives the annual report?
NEC Planning Solutions delivers skilled employment inside the project controls function, so the commitment sits in delivery rather than alongside it and the evidence is a by-product of the work. If you are drafting a response and want the delivery side pressure-tested before it goes in, we will look at it with you.
