PPN 026: What the New Social Value Model Signals
On 5 August 2026, the Cabinet Office published Procurement Policy Note 026 (PPN 026), setting out a new Social Value Model for central government contracts. It's a technical-sounding document, but underneath it is a genuinely significant statement about what "social value" is now understood to mean in UK public life, and it's worth pausing on that, rather than treating this as just another compliance update.
A narrower definition
PPN 026 closes that latitude down. Social value for central government contracts is now defined as one thing: how a supplier will work for communities to provide good British jobs, skills and opportunities in every postcode. Two outcomes, Good Jobs and Skills, with six award criteria between them, replace what used to be a much wider set of themes.
That's the second new Central Government Social Value Model in only 18 months. The pace of change is itself telling: this is a government actively still deciding what it wants social value to be, and landing, for now, on jobs and skills as the answer.
Why jobs and skills, and why now
The model is explicit about who it's aimed at: NEETs, care leavers, people with disabilities or long-term health conditions, and others facing barriers to employment. Read alongside the wider weighting change - a minimum of 10% on contracts up to £5 million, rising to at least 20% at £5 million and above - this isn't a symbolic gesture. It's public procurement being repositioned as an instrument of labour market policy, not a general-purpose vehicle for social good.
There's a coherent logic to that. Employment and skills are measurable in a way that "community wellbeing" never quite was, and a government under pressure to show economic outcomes from public spending has an obvious incentive to point procurement at something it can count. But it's worth naming what gets lost in that trade: environmental and community-facing commitments that used to count meaningfully towards social value scoring now sit outside the model entirely for in-scope contracts.
What this reveals about the direction of travel
Taken together with the pace of revision - two models in 18 months - PPN 026 reads less like a settled policy and more like an ongoing negotiation over what social value is for. That's not necessarily a criticism. Procurement policy adjusting as evidence comes in about what actually moves the needle is healthy. But it does mean organisations that have spent years building broad, values-led social value practice now have to decide how much of that work still counts on paper for this part of the market - even if the underlying value it creates hasn't changed at all.
The honest answer is: it depends who you're delivering for. Local authorities, the NHS, and private sector clients aren't bound by PPN 026, and many will continue to value a broader definition of social impact. But for anyone whose work touches central government contracts of £1 million or more, from 1 January 2027, the definition that matters has just gotten a lot narrower - and a lot more specific about who it's trying to help.
The key questions
Is a tighter, more measurable definition of social value actually a stronger one - or does something get lost when environmental and community outcomes stop counting for as much? PPN 026 doesn't answer that question so much as make a bet on one side of it. Whether that bet pays off in better outcomes for the people it's targeting, or simply narrows what gets funded, is something we'll only really be able to judge once the first contracts under the new model start being delivered.
