Social Value in Care Tenders:
The Complete Guide for 2026
If you've opened a tender document recently and found a section headed "social value" or "most advantageous tender criteria" — and weren't sure what commissioners actually want — this guide is for you. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force in February 2025, social value in care tenders is no longer a nice-to-have box to tick. It is a scored, weighted criterion that can win or lose a contract.
Reviewed against cited public sources · Final requirements must be checked against current procurement documents
Last updated:
- 1. What is social value and why it matters for care tenders in 2026
- 2. How social value is scored in care contracts
- 3. The five categories of social value evidence commissioners expect
- 4. How to write a strong social value response
- 5. Common social value mistakes care providers make
- 6. TUPE — the social value dimension
- 7. How CareBids helps you build your social value evidence base
- 8. Social value FAQs for care providers
- 9. Key takeaways
The five categories of social value evidence commissioners expect
Social-value models commonly group evidence into themes, but names and scope vary. Use the categories below as prompts and follow the current model named by the buyer.
Theme 1
Employment & Workforce
Evidence commissioners typically ask for:
- Local recruitment — proportion of staff living within the contract area
- Jobs created for long-term unemployed or economically inactive residents
- Apprenticeship starts and completions (NVQ Level 2/3 in care)
- Supported employment for people with disabilities
- Staff retention data (sector average is 28–35% annual turnover; beating that benchmark is itself a social value claim)
Care sector note: Skills for Care data shows the care sector employs around 1.7 million people in England. Commissioners know care is a local employer — they expect you to show exactly how local.
Theme 2
Skills & Training
Evidence commissioners typically ask for:
- Hours of accredited training delivered to staff per year
- CPD investment per head (£ per employee)
- Registered manager development — Level 5 Diploma completions
Care sector note: CQC routinely flags workforce development as a key quality indicator. Connecting your training data to social value is smart — it does double duty in the quality schedule too. Mental health first aid training is increasingly expected; include it under wellbeing or here, depending on your strongest story.
Theme 3
Health & Wellbeing
Evidence commissioners typically ask for:
- Outcomes achieved for service users (independence, hospital avoidance)
- Staff wellbeing programme — EAP access, mental health support
- Volunteer hours delivered to service users (befriending, activities)
- Reductions in A&E attendance or unplanned hospital admissions
Care sector note: This is where care providers have a natural advantage. You are the social value. Quantify the wellbeing impact you deliver — commissioners want numbers, not narrative.
Theme 4
Climate & Environment
Evidence commissioners typically ask for:
- Carbon reduction commitments and Net Zero pathway
- EV fleet transition or low-emission vehicle policy
- Energy efficiency improvements to care home premises
- Sustainable procurement — local and ethical supplier spend
- Waste reduction measures and recycling rates at the service level
Care sector note: Environmental criteria carry less weight in most care tenders than employment and wellbeing — but ignoring them entirely will cost you marks. A basic carbon reduction plan is enough to score here.
Theme 5
Community & Place
Evidence commissioners typically ask for:
- Partnerships with local charities, faith groups, or community organisations
- Spend with local small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
- Open days, community activities, or intergenerational programmes
- Volunteering hours contributed by staff to community projects
Care sector note: Commissioners from the LGA and NHS England increasingly expect providers to demonstrate rootedness in the local community — not just service delivery, but genuine civic participation.
Important: Most care tenders in 2026 ask you to select two or three of these themes and provide deep evidence in those areas, rather than attempting thin coverage of all five. Choose the themes where your organisation has the strongest existing evidence. Employment and wellbeing are almost always the most relevant choices for care providers.
Next step
Your social value evidence, ready when you need it
CareBids stores your social value evidence, employment data, and community impact metrics in one place — ready to drop into any tender response in seconds. Book a demo.
How to write a strong social value response in a care tender
A social value response is not a values statement. It is an evidence submission with a commitment attached. The structure that consistently scores well — based on patterns across dozens of successful care contract bids we've supported — follows four steps.
Anchor to the commissioner's priorities
Before you write a single word about your organisation, read the commissioner's social value framework. Local authorities publish their own social value strategies. NHS Integrated Care Systems have People Plans and population health priorities. If the tender is from a London borough focused on reducing youth unemployment, your response should lead with apprenticeship data and school engagement partnerships — not Net Zero targets.
Lead with past performance, not future commitments
Distinguish verified past delivery, contract-specific commitments and the reporting method. Use the emphasis and evidence standard in the current evaluation criteria.
Example response language
"During [verified period], [verified number] employees lived in [defined area]. Source: [approved workforce report]. For this contract we commit to [deliverable action], owned by [role] and reported through [method]."
Make your commitments specific and contract-bound
Vague promises about 'continuing to invest in our workforce' score nothing. A commitment has a number, a timeframe, and an accountability mechanism. Tie each commitment to the contract term and the contract geography. Show that you've thought about what's deliverable specifically within this contract — not a generic extract from your standard social value policy.
Example response language
"During the term of this contract, we commit to: (a) creating a minimum of 2 new apprenticeships (NVQ Level 2 in Care) in [LA area] per year of the contract; (b) maintaining a minimum of 65% local recruitment from within 5 miles of the service; (c) delivering 120 volunteer befriending hours annually in partnership with [local charity]."
Specify how you'll report and be accountable
Commissioners setting KPIs under the Procurement Act 2023 need to know how they'll verify your delivery. Offer a reporting structure: quarterly social value data submissions in a specified format, an annual review meeting, and a named social value lead within your organisation. The registered manager is the natural candidate for this role in most care organisations.
Care-specific social value commitments that score well
These four commitment areas can provide useful prompts where they are relevant to the commissioner's published priorities and backed by deliverable evidence:
Local employment pathways
Formalising a partnership with the local Jobcentre Plus or adult education provider. Even a letter of intent from the college carries weight — it shows the commitment is real and structured, not aspirational.
Apprenticeships and workforce progression
Apprenticeship starts (NVQ Level 2/3 in Health and Social Care) are a highly visible metric. If you have a registered manager working towards their Level 5 Diploma, that counts too. Skills for Care's Workforce Development Fund is worth referencing here.
Staff wellbeing programme
An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) or mental health first aid programme — with the number of staff covered and hours of support available — is a concrete wellbeing commitment that requires little administrative burden to evidence.
Community partnerships
A genuine partnership with a local voluntary organisation can be evidenced through an agreed activity, owner and measurement plan. Do not name a partner or quantify delivery without its agreement.
And a word on AI bid writing: the social value section is one area where AI tools help considerably with structure and language — but only if the underlying data is there. An AI tool that doesn't know your staff postcode breakdown, your apprenticeship starts, or your volunteer hours will produce generic language. The data has to come from you. That is precisely why evidence storage matters so much.
Common social value mistakes care providers make
After reviewing the social value sections of bids across a wide range of care contracts, the same failure patterns appear again and again. These are the four we see most often — and what to do instead.
Writing aspirations instead of evidence
Separate verified past delivery from future commitments. Use only current, privacy-appropriate metrics and follow the published scoring criteria; do not invent a local-employment percentage.
Treating social value as a separate section
Social value answers that feel disconnected from the rest of the bid raise flags. A strong response weaves workforce data, training investment, and community impact through the quality schedule, pricing narrative, and mobilisation plan — not just in the dedicated social value box.
Using generic language that fits any sector
Phrases like "we are committed to diversity and sustainability" tell a commissioner nothing. They are evaluating a care contract. Responses that reference the local authority's Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, name specific community partners in the area, and cite care-sector workforce statistics (from Skills for Care, for instance) score considerably higher.
Failing to quantify
Use metrics only where they are relevant, current and reproducible. The tender documents—not a fixed quota—determine what evidence is required.
One more: recycling responses across contracts
This is the mistake we see most often from multi-site operators. Taking a social value section written for a contract in Sunderland and resubmitting it for a contract in Surrey — with minimal changes — is immediately obvious to any experienced evaluator. Place-specific language, named local partners, and references to local strategic documents cannot simply be swapped.
The solution isn't to write from scratch every time. It's to maintain a social value evidence base — with consistent metrics — and localise quickly from that base. That's exactly what the CareBids platform is built to support. See how it works on the platform page.
Frameworks evaluators expect you to know
Two concepts underpin how commissioners assess social value commitments. Understanding them before you write a single word will significantly improve the quality and credibility of your response.
The Additionality principle
Social value must be over and above the core contract. You cannot claim "providing quality care" as social value when the contract is for providing care. Additionality means a benefit that would not have existed without this specific contract award.
Hiring 2 local apprentices who would not otherwise have been recruited is additionality. Stating that your staff deliver "person-centred care" is not — that is the baseline the commissioner is already paying for.
When drafting each commitment, ask: would this happen without this contract? If the answer is yes, it is not social value. If the answer is no — or only partially — explain why the contract makes it possible.
The National TOMs framework
Many local authorities and NHS commissioners evaluate social value using the National TOMs (Themes, Outcomes, Measures) framework, developed by the Local Government Association and Social Value Portal. The five themes are: Jobs, Growth, Social, Environment, and Innovation.
TOMs uses a Proxy Financial Value model: each social value commitment is assigned a specific pound value, allowing evaluators to compare bids quantitatively. For example, creating one full-time job for a long-term unemployed person carries a defined proxy value (currently £43,981 per person-year under TOMs 2021 measures). A care provider committing to two apprenticeships and 120 volunteer hours can calculate an approximate total social value figure and present it alongside their response.
If a tender references TOMs explicitly, use the framework's measure codes in your response (e.g. TOM C2, TOM E1). If it does not, you can still reference proxy values informally — it signals evaluator-level literacy and makes your commitments easier to score.
TUPE in care tenders — the social value dimension
TUPE — the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 — applies whenever a care contract transfers from one provider to another and existing staff move with it. Most registered managers understand the legal basics: employees transfer on their existing terms, dismissals connected to the transfer are automatically unfair, and the incoming provider inherits any outstanding employment liabilities.
What fewer providers consider is that TUPE handling is increasingly treated as a social value indicator by commissioners. This catches people off guard. An incoming provider who signals a genuine commitment to workforce continuity (retaining experienced staff, maintaining pay terms, investing in their development) is demonstrating social value in one of its most tangible forms.
In practice, care contracts have exceptionally high staff turnover rates. Skills for Care's annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector reports consistently show turnover rates of 28–35% across the sector. A commissioner awarding a new contract knows that destabilising the existing workforce risks immediate quality deterioration. A provider who articulates a clear TUPE commitment — including a named mobilisation plan, a dedicated lead for staff communication, and a retention target for the first 90 days — is addressing one of the commissioner's primary anxieties.
TUPE social value evidence to include in your response
- Retention rate of TUPE-transferred staff at 3, 6, and 12 months from previous contracts you've taken on
- Named mobilisation lead (typically the registered manager or a dedicated HR contact)
- Staff communication plan — when and how you'll engage with transferring employees before the start date
- Commitment to maintaining existing terms of employment beyond the statutory minimum period
- Investment in transferring staff's development in the first contract year
Where TUPE experience is relevant, use current, lawfully handled workforce evidence and explain its scope and limitations. Do not reuse a retention figure across tenders without checking the population, period and question. The care DPS guide discusses workforce evidence across procurement routes.
How CareBids helps care providers build their social value evidence base
The core problem with social value in care tendering isn't that providers lack good stories. It's that those stories are scattered — across payroll reports, training records, HR files, volunteer rotas, and the registered manager's memory. When a tender lands with a 10-day deadline, pulling all of that together coherently is genuinely difficult.
CareBids can bring selected organisation evidence into the tender workflow so users can review its source, currency and relevance before making a commitment.
Workforce data store
Store staff postcode breakdowns, employment start dates, training completions, and turnover rates. Pull local employment percentages instantly when a tender asks for them.
Training & development log
Record NVQ starts and completions, CPD hours, apprenticeship data, and specialist training. Annual summaries are generated automatically.
Community impact tracker
Log volunteer hours, community partnership activities, befriending programme data, and hospital avoidance outcomes. Build a rolling record across all sites.
Social value response library
Earlier social value sections can retain outcome context and commissioner feedback where available. Check relevance, evidence and commitments before adapting an answer.
The evidence base integrates directly with CareBids' AI bid writing tool, so when you draft a social value response, the AI draws on your actual stored data rather than generic sector language. For providers bidding on domiciliary care contracts, where multiple similar tenders appear across a region in the same procurement window, the time saving is substantial.
This is the differentiation that consulting firms and generic bid-writing software can't replicate: a platform that knows your organisation's specific social value data and uses it consistently, across every tender, without starting from scratch each time.
Social value FAQs for care providers
The questions we hear most often from registered managers and care directors — answered plainly.
Key takeaways — social value in care tenders 2026
Check the current Act, policy note and buyer documents before applying a social-value model. Record the actual weighting and evidence requirements for the procurement in front of you.
Separate verified past delivery from contract-bound commitments, name an owner and reporting method, and localise the response to the buyer's stated priorities. Do not recycle metrics without checking scope, lawful use and currency.
Next step
Build a reviewable social-value evidence base.
Connect relevant workforce, training and community evidence to a tender response, then verify every commitment with its owner before approval.
Related guides and resources
How to Apply for a Care DPS
Dynamic Purchasing Systems explained — how they work, how to apply, and what commissioners assess.
AI Bid Writing for Care Tenders
How CareBids uses your approved evidence as source material for working drafts that still require review.
Domiciliary Care Contracts
Finding and winning domiciliary care contracts from local authorities and NHS commissioners.
This guide references the Procurement Act 2023, Social Value Act 2012, and PPN 002 (October 2025). Legislative guidance is updated regularly — check GOV.UK and your local commissioner's procurement portal for the most current requirements. This guide was last updated March 2026. Nothing in this guide constitutes legal advice.