Social Value 2032: Shaping the Future of Social Value
Social value can unlock billions in green investment, create thousands of employment and training opportunities, and generate millions for reinvestment in vital infrastructure to benefit people and planet. Social Enterprise UK was instrumental in helping to pass the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 – placing a legal obligation on public bodies to consider how the services they commission and procure might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of the areas they operate in.
In the decade since the Act was passed, it’s sparked long-needed debate on the role of procurement and transformed expectations of public spending. To expand its impact and influence over the next decade, Social Enterprise UK has convened the Social Value 2032 programme with corporate partners at the forefront of this growing movement, including Anthony Collins, Jacobs and PwC.
The Social Value 2032 programme aims to demonstrate the importance of social value to key political agendas like Net Zero targets and Levelling Up, building the research evidence base as well as engaging with government decision-makers and leading businesses.
The programme’s ultimate goal is for social value to cover all public sector procurement and influence the spending of the UK’s largest companies, with actions needed to achieve this detailed in the Social Value 2032 Roadmap. This Roadmap was informed by roundtables on law and regulation, measurement, investment and supply chains.
Further research and expert insight are shared in the Social Value 2032 podcast, to help leaders in the public and private sector understand how social value can drive improvements and ensure greater sustainability across the UK’s diverse businesses and markets.
Programme partners gathered cross-sector experts for a Social Value Leaders’ Summit in May 2022, where they outlined their collective vision and key stakeholders explored how social value can be used as a tool to shape markets and organisational behaviour. The next Summit was held in March 2024, where new research was published looking at the implementation of social value by local authorities.
For more information about the Social Value 2032 programme, Social Value Leaders’ Summit 2025, and partnership opportunities, contact Jennifer.Exon@socialenterprise.org.uk.
Social Value 2032 Roadmap
The Social Value 2032 Roadmap, published in June 2023, sets out the steps needed to make the ambitious vision behind the Social Value 2032 Programme a reality. It provides a guide on how social value can be embedded across all public sector procurement and used to transform the spending of large private sector companies.
From creating a consistent legal and regulatory framework with common measuring standards, to strengthening supply chains and changing workplace cultures, the Roadmap details short and long-term proposals to transform the system so that organisations’ everyday spending can actively benefit wider society.
The State of Social Value in Public Sector Spending
This latest report, published at the Social Value Leaders’ Summit in March 2024, analyses public sector engagement with social value. Based on Freedom of Information requests to all local authorities in England and Wales, it builds on a 2016 research exercise to form the most comprehensive dataset on social value implementation in the country.
Results paint a mixed picture, with engagement increasing over the years but progress limited by a lack of clarity and consistency. While the percentage of councils with a social value policy or strategy has more than doubled since 2016, these efforts are often not effectively communicated or measured – a missed opportunity for local government to realise the full potential of this transformative approach.
Creating a Social Value Economy – A collective vision from Social Value 2032 Partners
Launched at the Social Value Leaders’ Summit on 18 May 2022, which brought together key stakeholders explore the future of social value, this important report sets out a new vision for social value and explores how social value can be a tool to shape markets and organisational behaviour. As the UK Government looks to take forward its ‘levelling-up’ plans, the report identifies the benefits of creating an economy with social value at its heart and using existing public sector spending to reduce inequalities and transition to a green economy. The report also calls on the UK’s largest businesses to adopt a social value approach to working with the public sector.
This new vision for social value focuses on how best to use procurement to drive improvement and greater sustainability in businesses and markets in the UK; transform public services and accelerate the drive to Net Zero.
We’ve also put together this two-pager which outlines the Social Value 2032 partnerships’ collective vision for the Social Value Economy.
The Social Value Podcast
Social Impact. ESG. Corporate Social Responsibility. The triple bottom line. There’s no doubt that businesses are looking at ways to do things differently.
The aim of The Social Value Podcast is to help leaders in the public and private sector, to understand how using a “social value” approach will enable better decisions. It will feature interviews with leaders from organisations committed to using social value and explore how using social value across public and private sector procurement can drive improvement and greater sustainability in businesses and markets in the UK, transforming public services and accelerating the drive to Net Zero.
You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the link below.
Other Social Value 2032 publications
Social Value 2032 partners