Making the UK’s Social Value Model work: why evidence matters

The UK Government Social Value Model has fundamentally changed how public sector organisations think about value. It makes one thing clear: public investment must deliver measurable social, economic, and environmental outcomes — not just activity. Social value is no longer defined by intent alone, but by the demonstrable difference investment makes to people’s lives and to places over time.

At Impera Analytics, we help organisations turn the Social Value Model from a procurement requirement into a strategic tool for decision-making and long-term impact. Our focus is on ensuring that social value commitments are meaningful, locally relevant, and capable of standing up to scrutiny long after contracts are awarded.

The Challenge: Social Value in Name, Not in Impact

While the UK Social Value Model provides a strong and necessary framework, many organisations still struggle to translate its themes into action that reflects local need. Social value responses are often well-written but difficult to operationalise, with commitments that are hard to evidence once delivery begins.

Common challenges include translating national themes into place-specific interventions, evidencing outcomes beyond short-term outputs, aligning social value commitments to local priorities, and tracking progress consistently over time. As expectations rise from commissioners, communities, and regulators, social value must be able to withstand scrutiny, audit, and lived experience — not just procurement evaluation.

How Impera Aligns to the UK Social Value Model

The UK Social Value Model is structured around five core themes. Impera’s approach is designed to support delivery and measurement across each one, ensuring that social value is grounded in evidence and responsive to the realities of place.

COVID-19 Recovery remains a critical theme, even as the immediate crisis has passed. Many communities continue to experience long-term impacts, including poor health outcomes, economic insecurity, and reduced resilience. Impera supports recovery by helping organisations identify areas where health, employment, and wellbeing pressures persist, target investment where recovery has stalled, and track indicators such as life expectancy, mental health outcomes, economic inactivity, and access to essential services. This ensures that recovery-focused activity is targeted, measurable, and responsive to real need.

Tackling Economic Inequality requires recognising that economic pressures vary significantly between places. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely delivers meaningful outcomes. Impera enables partners to understand local labour market conditions and skills gaps, identify barriers to employment and progression, and measure access to education, training, digital connectivity, and transport. By grounding social value in local economic conditions, organisations can demonstrate how their activity supports inclusive growth rather than isolated job creation.

Fighting Climate Change is most effective when environmental outcomes are considered alongside social vulnerability. Impera supports this theme by linking environmental indicators to social impact, including air quality and health outcomes, access to green space and physical activity, active travel and sustainable transport access, and waste, recycling, and environmental quality. This integrated approach allows organisations to show how environmental investment contributes to health, wellbeing, and long-term resilience, rather than treating climate outcomes in isolation.

Equal Opportunity goes beyond representation and requires genuine access to opportunity. Impera helps organisations identify inequalities linked to disability, deprivation, education, and digital access, target interventions where barriers are highest, and monitor whether outcomes are improving for vulnerable groups. By focusing on foundational conditions, we support social value activity that addresses root causes rather than short-term symptoms.

Wellbeing is often where social value becomes most tangible to communities. Impera supports this theme through indicators that capture physical and mental health outcomes, safety and community cohesion, access to sports, leisure, and cultural infrastructure, and trust, participation, and overall quality of place. This enables organisations to evidence how investment improves everyday lived experience, not just service delivery metrics.

Why Impera Is a Strong Social Value Partner

What differentiates Impera is our ability to connect Social Value Model themes to real outcomes, in real places. We provide place-based evidence aligned to national priorities, outcome-focused measurement frameworks, and tools that support planning, delivery, and reporting. Our insight strengthens bids, governance, and accountability by ensuring that social value commitments are defensible and credible.

Through this approach, we help organisations move from policy alignment, to local relevance, to measurable impact.

One of the Social Value Model themes that organisations are increasingly expected to address is Equal Opportunity — reducing barriers to work and creating fair, inclusive pathways to employment. We’re seeing this reflected in the wider market: major contractors are embedding Equality, Diversity & Inclusion plans, investing in training and apprenticeships, and creating targeted employment opportunities for under-represented groups, alongside commitments to fair pay and worker wellbeing.

These are precisely the kinds of commitments that shift social value from abstract discussion to tangible outcomes for people and communities, and they demonstrate how social value frameworks can align commitments to fair work, skills development, and inclusive growth with measurable delivery. 

Social Value That Is Defensible, Transparent, and Credible

As scrutiny increases from auditors, regulators, communities, and funders, social value must be more than aspirational. Impera helps partners deliver social value that is aligned to the UK Social Value Model, grounded in robust data, responsive to local context, and trackable over time.

Because social value only works when it genuinely improves lives — and when that improvement can be clearly evidenced.