What Is Social Value in Construction — and Why It Matters

If you work for or with a construction company that bids for public sector contracts — housing, infrastructure, NHS, schools — you've probably heard the phrase "social value." It comes up in procurement conversations, in tender documents, in KPI reviews. But what it actually means in practice, and why it connects directly to the young people that organisations like ours work with, often gets lost.

Here's the straight version.

The Social Value Act and What It Requires

The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 requires public bodies to consider the wider social, economic, and environmental benefits of the contracts they award. In construction, this has real teeth: public sector contracts — particularly those over certain thresholds — now routinely include social value commitments as part of the scoring criteria.

In plain English: if you want the contract, you need to show what good you're doing beyond delivering the build on time and on budget.

Since 2020, central government has required a minimum 10% weighting for social value in all major contracts. Many local authorities and housing associations go further. Social value isn't a nice-to-have anymore. On public-funded work, it's scored and it affects who wins.

What the TOMs Framework Is

The most commonly used measurement system for social value in construction is the TOMs framework — Themes, Outcomes, and Measures. It was developed by the National Social Value Taskforce and is used by hundreds of local authorities and public bodies as the standard way of reporting social value delivery.

The framework breaks down into five themes:

• Jobs — creating employment, particularly for disadvantaged groups
• Growth — supporting local SMEs and supply chain
• Skills — training, qualifications, apprenticeships
• Wellbeing — community health and quality of life outcomes
• Environment — sustainability commitments

Each outcome has a proxy financial value attached to it — a way of converting social impact into a pound figure that can be reported and compared. Employing someone from a long-term unemployed background, for example, carries a specific proxy value. Training a young person from a justice-involved background and helping them into employment carries another.

Why Young People From Difficult Backgrounds Are Specifically Valuable Here

TOMs places higher proxy values on outcomes for people who face the most significant barriers to employment. A company that employs a university graduate carries some social value. A company that employs someone who has been in the criminal justice system, or who comes from a disadvantaged background, and helps them into a sustainable career — that carries considerably more.

This isn't a charitable framing. It's the mechanics of how social value is scored and reported. For a construction company bidding on public contracts, demonstrating that they've employed or trained people from genuinely hard-to-reach groups is worth more points — and in competitive tender scoring, points translate directly to contract wins.

This is why the pipeline that Route 2 Trade creates — young people from prisons, probation, and justice-involved backgrounds who are trade-ready — is commercially relevant to construction companies, not just morally relevant.

How Companies Are Reporting It

On most large public-sector construction projects, social value is reported through the contract duration. Contractors submit evidence of their social value activities — training delivered, local employment created, qualifications achieved — and this is measured against the commitments they made in their tender.

Failure to deliver on social value commitments can affect future tender scores and, in some contracts, triggers financial penalties. Companies take this seriously — not because they've suddenly become altruistic, but because it affects their ability to win the next contract.

The practical result: construction companies are actively looking for partners who can help them hit their social value numbers. Employment and training of people from disadvantaged backgrounds is one of the fastest ways to generate reportable social value. They need a credible pipeline of people — trained, CSCS-ready, employment-ready.

What This Means for Organisations Working With Young People

If you run a charity, alternative provision, youth justice service, or probation programme — and you're working with young people heading toward employment — the construction industry has both an economic incentive to hire from your cohorts and a specific mechanism for recording the value of doing so.

This changes the conversation from "please give our young people a chance" to something more straightforward: you have a contractual requirement to demonstrate social value employment. We have a pool of trained, trade-ready young people. That's a transaction, not a favour.

The key word there is "trade-ready." Companies aren't going to take on young people who don't know the basics and manage all the training themselves — they don't have the infrastructure for that. What they need is people who have been through a structured programme, understand the industry, have the relevant awareness, and are genuinely ready to take the next step.

That's exactly what a proper trade pathway programme produces.

The Broader Picture

Social value policy in the UK is not going anywhere. If anything, it's expanding. The Procurement Act 2023 strengthened requirements across public contracting, and the emphasis on community benefit — including employment of disadvantaged groups — has increased under successive governments regardless of party.

For construction companies bidding on public work, social value delivery is now a core business function. The question is where they source the people and evidence to meet their commitments.

The pipeline that Route 2 Trade feeds into — young people from the justice system, properly prepared for trades — is one of the highest-value sources of social value evidence they can find. That's not a selling point we invented. It's how the TOMs framework works.

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