Guest blog: Procurement of Social Value – should ‘good work’ really be additional?
In this guest blog, Anne Lythgoe, Director of the Social Audit Network, challenges the UK’s public procurement system for treating “good work”—fair pay, job security, and decent conditions—as a bonus rather than a baseline. Despite strong policy rhetoric and initiatives like the GM Good Employment Charter, she argues that current legislation and procurement practices fall short of embedding these principles into public contracts. While other countries boldly mandate employment standards in procurement, the UK lags behind, relying on weak social value scoring and voluntary commitments.
Read Anne’s blog to see why good work should be the rule, not the exception.
Author
Anne Lythgoe
Published
Type
Guest Blog
Theme
Social Value
In 2020 Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, launched the GM Good Employment Charter[1] as “a major step towards making sure that new and existing jobs right across Greater Manchester are underpinned by a commitment to equality, fair pay, and giving employees a say in how their workplaces are run – securing our city-region as an area of employment excellence.”
“Good work’ is now a central part of the government’s policy agenda, as indicated in its key employment-focused documents: the white paper Get Britain Working and the policy paper Next Steps to Make Work Pay. The strap line of the white paper is to get Britain growing again, we’ve got to get Britain working again, and the foreword goes on to say that ‘helping people into decent, well-paid jobs and giving our children and young people the best opportunities to get on in life… is how we get Britain working and growing again’.
So why then, when it comes to public procurement, is ‘good work’ something that is seen as being optional, and additional – even for public services contracts that directly employ people in low-paid and insecure jobs like carers, cleaners and security staff?
Whilst I know the answer lies in the complexity of the economy or provider markets, and in employment and procurement law, I do find it sad that ‘Good Work’ including fair wages and good working conditions, helping people stay in work and to progress in their careers is simply an outcome in the Government’s updated ‘Social Value Model[3]’ and not a mandated requirement when spending public money.
Our legislation is weak – as the Government’s website explains[4], the Public Services (Social Value) Act requires people who commission public services to think about how they can also secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits. The Act aims to be a tool to help commissioners get more value for money out of procurement.
However, driving out social value – the wider benefit to a place – is very much determined by what the ‘market’ is prepared to offer and has become over-simplified, transactional, driven by a national measurement framework and not the achievement of outcomes that are relevant to a particular place, local economy or community. Social value is additional to the core purpose of a contract and is usually only valued at around 10% of the tender evaluation score.
In other countries, it appears that public agencies are bolder in their focus on good work. In Sweden, for example, employment requirements in public procurement mean that a purchasing organisation can place mandatory conditions so that, for the contractual period, the successful bidder must provide employment, training, internship or traineeship for individuals who have difficulty entering the job market[5].
All Danish regional authorities and nine out of ten Danish municipalities apply labour clauses in their publicly procured work[6].
Barcelona City Council has published a socially responsible public procurement guide[7] that incorporates social justice goals and promotes the social and employment rights of the individuals who execute its contracts. The guide sets out measures for promoting the execution of contracts following a business model based on decent salaries and stable employment contracts with a code of ethical behaviour, where gender equality and employment access for individuals who have difficulties securing jobs are a priority in the recruitment process.
Maybe I am setting my expectations too high. It is very difficult to mandate something about which there isn’t a clear agreement. The reality is that ‘good work’ is not a destination, but a journey that employers can take through a constantly changing landscape supported by initiatives like the GM Good Employment Charter. What our approach to ‘social value’ does is bring employers into the ‘good work’ conversation, forces them to think about their own practice and offer to make improvements if they wish to win public contracts.
I just wish there was more we could do, because the benefits for individual people and their communties, for businesses and the wider economy of embedding good employment practice into public procurement in terms of higher levels of local employment, a stronger local economy and greater economic prosperity – might just be the key that unlocks the Government’s ambition of an 80% employment rate.
Perhaps there’s just a lag between government policy and procurement / social value regulations? In June 2025, the Cabinet Office opened a consultation[8] on how public procurement might be better designed to drive growth, British industry, jobs and skills. Consultation questions refer to the role of social value as being the route to ensuring a supplier’s contribution towards job opportunities, improved skills and aspects of good work.
I strongly disagree with the premise that good work is part of social value and suggest that government and public authorities should be much, much bolder. Once the Employment Rights Bill[9] becomes law, the ’bricks and mortar’ of good employment (as we’ve defined it to date) should now be experienced by everyone, and good work clauses in social value statements will be increasingly difficult to ask for and, more importantly, measure.
This surely is the time for public agencies to introduce a procurement approach which requires specific aspects of ‘good work’ in all of their contracts, not just asks prospective suppliers to ‘think about’ it; leaving the social value (or the “that’s great but what else are you going to do”) section to focus on other relevant aspects of positive societal impact. And it is definitely time for the Government to take a fresh look at the Social Value Act, so that it better works with other new legislation to implement their core mission to grow the economy, raise living standards across the country and create opportunities by tackling low pay, poor working conditions and poor job security.
Anne Lythgoe – September 2025
[1] Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter
[2] Good Work Project | Local Government Association
[3] 2025-02-11 PPN 002 The social value model (2).docx
[4] Social Value Act: information and resources – GOV.UK
[5] Procurement with the aim of increasing employment | The National Agency for Public Procurement
[6] Promoting decent work through public procurement in cleaning and private security services – country report Denmark – Warwick IER – News and blogs
[7] Social public procurement | Contractació Pública | Ajuntament de Barcelona
[8] Public Procurement: Growing British industry, jobs and skills (HTML) – GOV.UK
[9] Employment Rights Bill – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament
Thank you Anne
Find out more about the work of the Social Audit Network.
Find out about 10GM’s Social Value work
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Procurement of Social Value – should ‘good work’ really be additional?
In this guest blog, Anne Lythgoe, Director of the Social Audit Network, highlights how Greater Manchester’s VCFSE organisations embody ‘social value’ as their core purpose.
While the 2012 Social Value Act aimed to achieve broader social outcomes, its focus on metrics has often sidelined the sector’s intrinsic contributions. Anne calls for a strategic approach that values the role of VCFSE organisations in fostering wellbeing, environmental improvements, and community benefit, moving beyond transactional models to deliver meaningful change.
