--- title: "Prove it or lose it: the new rules of social value" description: For a decade, social value was something you promised at tender and explained at year-end. The Procurement Act 2023 has closed that door. image: https://blog.neighbourly.com/hubfs/pexels-clement-nivesse-1601383-3074542.jpg --- [General](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/general) [Case studies](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/case-studies) [Social value](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/social-value) # Prove it or lose it: the new rules of social value By [Cara Walters](https://blog.neighbourly.com/author/cara-walters) on July 15, 2026 [**Back](https://blog.neighbourly.com) Prove it or lose it: the new rules of social value Share [mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value%20&body=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value&media=https://7111797.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/7111797/pexels-clement-nivesse-1601383-3074542.jpg](mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value%20&body=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value&media=https://7111797.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/7111797/pexels-clement-nivesse-1601383-3074542.jpg) ![Cara Walters](https://blog.neighbourly.com/hubfs/1710169442158.jpg) ###### Cara Walters [** ](mailto:cara.walters@neighbourly.com) [** Back to main blog](https://blog.neighbourly.com) Share [mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value%20&body=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value&media=https://7111797.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/7111797/pexels-clement-nivesse-1601383-3074542.jpg](mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value%20&body=Check%20out%20https://blog.neighbourly.com/prove-it-or-lose-it-the-new-rules-of-social-value&media=https://7111797.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/7111797/pexels-clement-nivesse-1601383-3074542.jpg) For a decade, social value was something you promised at tender and explained at year-end. The Procurement Act 2023 has closed that door. Organisations still treating impact as a story to tell, rather than a number to prove, are the ones most exposed to this shift. For most of the decade, social value operated on trust. A supplier made a pledge during tender, won the contract, and reported back — eventually, and usually, anecdotally. Procurement leads were often forced to rely on narratives and loose estimates, lacking the infrastructure to verify actual delivery, and the job was never clearly one person's — or one team's — responsibility. That pattern is now over. The catalyst wasn't cultural — it was legislative. ## **From a promise to a paper trail** The Procurement Act 2023 has redefined not only how social value is scored, but also what happens after the contract is signed. Preliminary market engagement now shapes commitments before tender. The shift from Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) to Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) gives procurement leads explicit licence to weight social outcomes alongside price, not beneath it. Contracts above £5 million now carry mandatory published KPIs, tracked and reported across the full contract lifecycle, with a public exclusion process for suppliers who fail to deliver. Since April 2026, quarterly payment reporting and supplier registration on the Central Digital Platform have extended that visibility even further, turning procurement records into a history that follows a supplier into every future bid. It's easy to underestimate how public this has made things. The old habit of rounding up impact figures at year-end is no longer a reputation issue; it's now a permanent matter of public record. A missed target is no longer just a missed target — it can be a disqualifying event for future contracts. ## **Scale was never the hard part** Neighbourly's own network has delivered over £2 billion in social value since 2014 — around £1 million a day. It's proof the sector can deliver real, measurable impact at scale. But scale is no longer the benchmark that matters most. The harder, now unavoidable, question is whether that impact was targeted, evidenced and sustained, or whether it simply looked good on paper. Performance still varies enormously by sector and supplier size, and it isn't the biggest spenders who are pulling ahead. It's the organisations who can show, precisely and on demand, who benefited, where and by how much. The gap that is opening up is between those with the infrastructure to evidence impact this way, and those still relying on narrative alone. ## **What "audit-ready" actually requires** Meeting this new bar isn't a communications challenge. It's an infrastructure challenge. In our experience, the organisations navigating this shift well share three things in common: **Hyper-local specificity.** Commitments are mapped to postcodes and demographics from the outset, not retrofitted into a report once delivery is already underway. **Real-time verification.** Impact is captured as it happens — volunteering hours, donations, surplus redistribution — rather than reconstructed from memory at the point of audit. **Shared visibility.** Commissioner and supplier work from the same live data, so accountability isn't something that gets negotiated after the fact. None of this needs to mean more admin. Done properly, it means less — because the reporting is the delivery record, not an afterthought bolted on as a compliance exercise. ## **The organisations already ahead** The good news is that this shift rewards the kind of social value that actually creates tangible change: targeted, needs-led, delivered in partnership with the communities it's meant to serve. It puts pressure on models that were never built with rigorous audit in mind. For public bodies and corporates alike, the practical question in play isn't "how do we report social value better?" It's "could we produce the evidence for every commitment we've made, right now, if asked?" Under the Procurement Act, this is no longer a hypothetical — it's increasingly the actual question being asked, in KPI publications, contract performance notices and audit committees. Social value hasn't become harder to deliver. It has become harder to overstate. And that shift plays to the strength of every organisation that has been building the evidence base all along. *Learn how *[*Neighbourly's Pulse*](https://hub.neighbourly.com/pulse-for-corporates)* gives bid and delivery teams real-time evidence, from targeting through to audit-ready reporting.* [** Previous Post](https://blog.neighbourly.com/how-to-eliminate-the-evidence-gap-in-public-sector-social-value) [View All](https://blog.neighbourly.com) ### Subscribe to the Neighbourly blog Stay connected with Neighbourly and receive new blog posts, insights & research findings directly in your inbox. ### Related Posts [![Neighbourly Know-How: Leveraging Surplus Donations to Make a Difference](https://blog.neighbourly.com/hubfs/M%26S%2070%20mil.png) ](https://blog.neighbourly.com/neighbourly-know-how-leveraging-surplus-donations-to-make-a-difference) 4 min read [General](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/general) [Guides & Resources](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/guides-resources) [Product surplus](https://blog.neighbourly.com/tag/product-surplus) ##### [Neighbourly Know-How: Leveraging Surplus Donations to Make a Difference](https://blog.neighbourly.com/neighbourly-know-how-leveraging-surplus-donations-to-make-a-difference) By [Isobel Gauld](https://blog.neighbourly.com/author/isobel-gauld) on March 13, 2025 For community organisations and good causes, accessing reliable sources of surplus goods can be transformative for... 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