Social Value Leadership Group
Social Value Leadership Group (SVLG)
Social Value is an important metric that organisations need to understand and utilise. Our purpose is to simplify social value measurement and provide education and tools.
What exactly is Social Value?
Put simply, social value refers to the benefits that the community receives from a project or an organisation beyond the financial benefits.
Such benefits can include improvements to quality of life, social cohesion, equality, job creation and the environment.
Why is Social Value important to organisations?
The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 was updated in February 2025. As described in the Act, it will be mandatory for public procurement projects from 1 October 2025.
The focus on how organisations contribute to Social Value is likely to increase, so measuring your organisation’s approach is important.
How can the Social Value Leadership Group help my organisation?
We can help you navigate the often confusing parameters around implementing and managing social value policies and practices.
We provide WCIT members with the following, complimentary services and tools:
- Guidance, tools, advice and fellowship on how to take action on social value
- Access to education and training
- Access to expert knowledge across multiple industries
- Practical advice on how to measure the impact of your strategies
We will help you to embed social value strategies within your organisation and comply with the Social Value Act for public procurement. Our motivation is simple: we help WCIT organisations help the community and generate both economic and social values.
What does Social Value Measurement look like?
There are different approaches to social value measurement in practice and are generally grouped into five levels:
- Level 1 would be a qualitative pass/fail measurement where a value judgement is made based on textual, pictorial or video material aimed at demonstrating the social value being created. The proposal may pass or fail but there is no further graduation. This basic process has been used by many smaller local authorities to fulfil their legal obligations under the terms of the Social Value Act.
- Level 2 is a scoring process where the proposed social value content is scored using a predetermined range against key social value criteria or indicators. The WCIT Social Value Improvement Model is based on this process.
- Level 3 is a quantitative process based on the application of appropriate metrics associated with a project or intervention such as the number of jobs created, number of hours of volunteering, reduction in carbon and emissions, etc.
- Level 4 is the monetisation of the level 3 quantitative metrics through the application of financial proxies. This brings all the unrelated elements of the social value proposal into common units of measure such that they can be meaningfully inter-traded to suit the project objectives.
- Level 5 applies a methodology such as cost benefit analysis (CBA) or social return on investment (SRoI) to the monetised metrics so that social value generated can be further analysed in the context of core project value.
How do I engage with the Social Value Leadership Group?
There are many ways to get started, such as:
- Join one of our face-to-face or online events on Social Value.
- Become a speaker in one of our events or a speaker in our monthly co-ordination meetings.
- Post your views and experiences on Social Value practices within your organisation in our LinkedIn Community.
- Join our Annual Conference in October.
- Become a user of WCIT Social Value Capability Self-assessment Tool.
- Join the Steering Board of the Social Value Leadership Group and contribute to the Social Value agenda on a regular basis.
Please contact socialvalue@wcit.org.uk for more information.
Free downloads:
WCIT Social Value Capability Improvement Model Playbook – V1.0