What the Procurement Act 2023 and the New PPN 026 Social Value Model Mean for Social Value Reporting, B Corp South West, and Corporate Volunteering in the UK

South West England — Exeter, Bristol, Devon, Somerset

Why This Matters Now

On 5 August 2026, the Cabinet Office quietly rewrote the rules on social value in UK public procurement. PPN 026 raises the contract threshold at which social value must be formally scored from £139,688 to £1 million, meaning most small and medium public contracts will no longer carry a mandatory social value score at all once it takes effect on 1 January 2027.

For South West SMEs that have spent the past few years building volunteering programmes, community partnerships and social value reports to help win public work, that can read like the floor dropping out. It isn't. It's a sign that the reasons to measure social value are shifting away from government mandate and toward something more durable: what clients, employees and communities already expect from a business — and nowhere is that clearer than in the South West, home to the highest concentration of certified B Corporations outside London.

What Actually Changed: PPN 026

PPN 026 replaces PPN 002 as the social value framework for UK central government contracts, sitting underneath the Procurement Act 2023, which embedded social value across the whole contract lifecycle when it came into force in February 2025.

                                    Before (PPN 002)     /  Now (PPN 026, from 1 Jan 2027)      

Structure: 5 Missions, 17 criteria      /        2 Outcomes, 6 Model Award Criteria

Scope:  Jobs, skills, environment, supply chain diversity /    Good Jobs and Skills only

Mandatory scoring threshold:  £139,688 /  £1,000,000

Minimum weighting: 10% across all contract values  /   10% (£1m–£5m), 20% (£5m+)

Reporting:  Standard Reporting Metrics   /    Contractual KPIs, published annually (contracts ≥£5m)

Detailed evaluation guidance is due from the Cabinet Office in autumn 2026, ahead of the model applying to procurements started on or after 1 January 2027.

What It Means for South West SMEs Bidding for Public Work

Most of the local authority, NHS and university contracts that South West SMEs typically bid for sit well under £1 million, so many will fall outside PPN 026's mandatory scoring entirely. Two things are worth flagging before anyone assumes social value has stopped mattering to buyers:

  1. PPN 026 is a floor, not a ceiling. Local authorities and NHS trusts across Devon, Somerset, Dorset and the wider South West can, and often do, set their own social value weighting on smaller contracts. Check the individual tender documents rather than assuming the national threshold applies.
  2. "Preliminary market engagement" still applies. Buyers remain expected to structure procurements so smaller firms and VCSEs aren't squeezed out, even without a dedicated SME award criterion in the new model.

The practical risk isn't that social value stops being asked for locally — it's that the removal of Standard Reporting Metrics makes it harder to benchmark and evidence consistently year on year without your own record-keeping.

Why Social Value Still Pays, Even Without a Government Mandate

Public procurement was never the only reason to measure social value — it was simply the easiest one to point to. Three trends are now doing the job procurement used to do.

Private clients are asking anyway. Large corporates increasingly cascade their own ESG and social value expectations down their supply chains regardless of what government requires, because it now feeds their own B Corp recertification, investor due diligence or sustainability reporting. An SME that can't produce a clean social value or volunteering record risks losing tender points with these buyers even where no government threshold applies.

The volunteering gap is a real opportunity. Formal volunteering in England has fallen from 45% of adults in 2013/14 to 28% in 2024/25, and the country has lost roughly 1.16 million volunteers aged over 50 since 2019 — around 110 million hours and up to £4 billion in value, according to research highlighted by Plinth. Charities and VCSEs are short-staffed and actively looking for structured, easy-to-manage corporate partnerships. Businesses that show up now, and can evidence it, stand out.

It's a recruitment and retention lever. Younger employees are entering volunteering at higher rates than older cohorts — the British Heart Foundation's average volunteer age has dropped from 50 to 30 — and expect flexible, purpose-led opportunities from employers. A visible social value programme is part of how SMEs compete for talent against bigger-name employers.

The South West Is Already Ahead of the Curve

While Whitehall was rewriting PPN 026, the South West's own social value ecosystem kept growing on its own terms. The region now has more than 400 certified B Corporations — the highest concentration outside London — including membership body Business West, which has certified as a B Corp itself.

Local recognition is catching up too: the Bristol Social Impact Awards 2026, run by community-sector network Voscur, showcase businesses and charities making a measurable local difference, while Exeter's own growing B Corp and social enterprise cluster continues to anchor the region's reputation as a place where good business practice is simply expected, not scored for a tender.

For South West SMEs, that's the real headline: the region's social value culture isn't dependent on a government contract threshold. It's demand-led — from customers, from B Corp certification standards, and from a local business community that has already decided this is how it wants to operate.

What South West SME Leaders Should Do Now

  1. Check the tender, not just the national threshold. Local social value weighting can still apply well below £1m — confirm it contract by contract rather than assuming PPN 026's floor is the whole story.
  2. Keep measuring regardless. Private-sector buyers, B Corp assessments and ESG questionnaires all ask for the same evidence government procurement used to require.
  3. Record volunteering and skills-sharing as you go. A spreadsheet started in January rarely survives to December — build the habit of logging hours and partnerships in one place, not retrospectively.
  4. Let the story do double duty. The same social value record that supports a tender can support a B Corp application, a funding bid, or a line on the careers page.

Tools like CommonGood, built in Exeter for exactly this South West business community, let SMEs log volunteering hours, skills-sharing and charity partnerships without the admin overhead of building a bespoke reporting system — turning good work into ready evidence for tenders, ESG questionnaires and B Corp assessments alike.

The Bottom Line

PPN 026 shrinks the government's formal social value requirements — but it doesn't shrink the case for doing the work. In the South West, where hundreds of B Corps and a fast-growing social enterprise scene have already set the bar, social value has stopped being a procurement checkbox and become simply how business gets done. The SMEs that keep measuring and telling that story, whether or not a tender asks for it, will be ready for whatever the next model asks for — on 1 January 2027 and long after.

Sources

As of 25 September 2026.