The concept of social value is rapidly becoming a mainstream concept for new developments in the UK thanks to the 2012 Social Value Act. This requires public authorities to consider societal impact when procuring services for contracts above a certain cost threshold.

Already we are seeing tenders for urban and town centre regeneration projects that set out specific scoring criteria for how social value will be integrated into the proposals and how potential contractors will be implementing social value strategies throughout the lifetime of the development.

One of the first invitations to tender that we were aware of with a major focus on social value in the bidding process was Cornwall council’s Pydar Street regeneration project in Truro. Of course, the social value focus was not just within the bidding process but was also a major requirement of the project deliverables.

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