PPN 026 vs PPN 002: What the Guidance Must Answer

PPN 026 will soon replace PPN 002 as the Social Value Model for central government, and it changes the system more than any update since the Model was created.

 But comparing PPN 026 with PPN 002 is harder than it looks, because most of what made PPN 002 work in practice sat in its supporting guidance. PPN 026’s equivalent guidance does not arrive until autumn 2026.

This post sets out what the new policy tells us, what the old system explained that the new one does not yet, and the questions that need answers before anyone can say how different social value in public procurement will be from 2027.

PPN 026: A short document with a long shadow

PPN 026 is a short document: a few pages of policy and a two-outcome model in its annex.

The system it replaces was not. PPN 002 arrived in February 2025 as a package:

• The PPN itself
• A full Social Value Model with sub-criteria for every award criterion
• A model social value question
• 33 Standard Reporting Metrics
• A detailed Guide to using the Social Value Model with an 18-question FAQ

Moreover, there was significant overlap with the machinery had been carried over and refined from PPN 06/20, which had operated since 2020.

In other words, until the PPN 026 guidance lands in autumn 2026, there are significant gaps in everyone’s understanding. That’s what we’ll look at in this blog.

What we know about PPN 026

We covered the changes in detail when the PPN was published, in The New Social Value Model: What PPN 026 Changes and When. In brief:

• Social value for central government contracts is redefined as “taking account of how a supplier will work for our communities to provide good British jobs, skills and opportunities in every postcode”.
• The Model applies to central government procurements of £1m or more including VAT, up from the £139,688 procurement threshold under PPN 002.
• Weighting is tiered: a minimum of 10% of the total score for contracts between £1m and £5m, and 20% for contracts of £5m or more. Under absolute methodologies such as Price per Quality Point, the percentage applies to the non-price score.
• The model shrinks from 5 Missions, 8 Policy Outcomes, 17 Model Award Criteria (MACs) and 33 Standard Reporting Metrics to 2 Outcomes (Good Jobs and Skills) and 6 MACs. Buyers select one relevant outcome per tender and attach relevant community programmes from a forthcoming government list.
• The Model does not apply to private utilities contracts or contracts delivered primarily overseas. For frameworks, social value will be assessed at both framework and call-off stage.
• Contracts of £5m or more must carry at least one social value KPI, published on the central digital platform and reported at least every 12 months. Poor performance can count against suppliers in future procurements.
• The new Model applies to procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027. During the transition, either edition may apply, so PPN 002 and PPN 026 will run side by side for some time.

The autumn 2026 guidance will need to contain:

• The sub-criteria
• The evaluation methodology
• A “List of Community Programmes” approved for inclusion in bids
• Full definitions of the target cohorts (people not in employment, education or training, people transitioning from education to employment, people with a long term health condition or disability, and care leavers)
• Target skills drawn from government skills strategies
• Guidance on recognising “existing, inherent social value”

What PPN 002 explained that PPN 026 does not yet

The gap between what we know about PPN 026 and PPN 002 lies mostly in the field of practice then.

Under PPN 002, a bid team or commercial team could answer almost any operational question from published material:

• The Guide specifies that assessment is qualitative: evaluators scored the method statement and implementation plan against the award criteria and sub-criteria, and volumes are explicitly not evaluated
• The model question tells suppliers what they would be asked
• The Standard Reporting Metrics mean a common deliverable is measured one way across government, and departments report those commitments to the Cabinet Office
• KPI performance is rated against published thresholds, from Good down to Inadequate
• The Guide dealt with frameworks, call-offs and dynamic markets, with overseas suppliers, with the Equality Act 2010, and with recurring questions such as how local a requirement can be and whether corporate policies count as social value (ie they don’t)

Each item on that list is currently a blank space in the PPN 026 system. That is not a criticism of the new PPN; PPN 002’s own machinery arrived as a package and the Cabinet Office has committed to a PPN 026 equivalent in the autumn.

But it does mean the honest answer to “how will PPN 026 work?” is, in most of the ways that matter day to day: we do not know yet.

The questions the PPN 026 guidance has to answer

Will assessment stay qualitative?

PPN 002 scored the quality of the plan, not the size of the numbers. The framing around PPN 026, from the doubled weighting to the press release’s example of 45 days of work experience, is noticeably more countable. Whether evaluators will score method statements, volumes, or both is the single biggest open question for bid strategy.

How will community programmes work?

The List of Community Programmes is entirely new. Who curates it, how a programme qualifies, and whether supporting a listed programme scores differently from an equivalent intervention a supplier designs itself are all unstated.

The PPN says bids will be assessed against “both community programme and non-community programme outcomes” under a methodology yet to be published.

What replaces the Standard Reporting Metrics?

There is no mention of SRMs in PPN 026; the implication is that measurement will run through contractual KPIs and the evaluation approach due in the guidance. How KPIs will be standardised or benchmarked across government without a common metric set, and whether PPN 002’s KPI rating thresholds carry over, is open. So is the mechanism by which poor KPI performance feeds exclusion decisions under the Procurement Act 2023.

Where is the equality boundary?

The target cohorts are named but not defined, and “other communities that face barriers to employment” is explicitly deferred. The PPN 002 Guide addressed the Equality Act and how far criteria could be targeted at a place; MAC 1a’s reference to jobs “in the relevant area” raises the same question for the new Model, alongside the standing requirement not to discriminate against treaty state suppliers.

What happens to frameworks in progress?

PPN 026 requires social value to be assessed at both framework and call-off stage. What it does not say is how frameworks let under PPN 002, or still operating on PPN 06/20 terms, are treated after 1 January 2027. Last time round, it took a Government Commercial Agency explainer in December 2025 to confirm that old-model frameworks kept the old model at call-off. An equivalent ruling for this transition does not yet exist, and dynamic markets are not mentioned in the PPN at all.

How do the weightings work in practice?

PPN 026 allows a minimum weighting “or equivalent measurement” without defining the equivalence, and says nothing about multi-stage assessments, where PPN 002’s FAQ explained how social value criteria should be applied when supplier numbers are reduced between stages or offers are improved after feedback.

What fills the gap below £1m?

Between £139,688 and £1m, social value in central government contracts becomes voluntary. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 still requires buyers to consider securing social improvement in services contracts, so how that duty operates in the newly exempt band, and whether departments keep asking social value questions there anyway, is a live practical question for both sides.

Does “inherent social value” change the additionality rule?

The Cabinet Office has promised guidance on taking account of “existing, inherent social value”, such as the community benefits of retaining local jobs.

Under PPN 002, social value had to be additional to the core deliverables of the contract. How inherent value can be recognised without dissolving that principle is perhaps the most consequential unknown of all.

What people are saying

Early reaction to PPN 026 has broadly welcomed the direction: the Federation of Small Businesses welcomed the £1m threshold, and major suppliers including Serco, Kier, Amey, Sopra Steria, Catch22 and the Care Leaver Covenant’s delivery partner Spectra backed the focus on jobs, skills and opportunity. The sharper debate is about who gains and who loses, and so far has concentrated around a few contested points.

Supply chain spend, local businesses and SMEs

The most pointed criticism is that the Model no longer scores supply chain diversity, removing the weighing that once flowed to spending with SMEs, social enterprises and local businesses. Social Enterprise UK warns that the £1m threshold compounds this by lifting social value out of the contract range where social enterprises most often compete, and that below £1m social value becomes voluntary — and, critics note, voluntary social value rarely survives a busy procurement. Is this where “inherent social value” will come into play?

Even the FSB’s welcome cuts both ways: the higher threshold spares small firms a bidding hurdle, but it also withdraws the mechanism that pushed spend towards them. As we mentioned in the last blog, there is a codicil to the new Model stressing the importance of spending with the SME/VCSE sectors, but what is its status and force?

Does job creation favour Tier 1 suppliers?

With supply chain diversity no longer scored, Social Enterprise UK argues that a large prime contractor could meet the full 20% weighting through direct hiring alone, claiming the credit for Good Jobs without passing value down to smaller partners.

Sector commentators extend the worry: an emphasis on measurable jobs and skills favours large organisations that can promise scale over smaller ones whose contribution is harder to standardise, and obligations may still be passed down supply chains without the budget to deliver them. The fear is a model that rewards Tier 1 volume over distributed, local benefit.

Narrowing social value to the economic

A third objection is about scope. Redefining social value around good British jobs, skills and opportunities — two economic Outcomes in place of five Missions — means the environment, wellbeing and equality outcomes that organisations have spent years building capability against are no longer scored at central government level.

Critics argue that valuable carbon, health and inclusion work now sits outside the Model, and that what is not scored tends not to get done once procurement pressure sets in.

Of course, these objectives are the focus of other policies but not, apparently, social value.

Evaluation and the shift to performance

Two further flashpoints recur in the commentary. On evaluation, a question being asked across the market goes to the heart of the methodology: should a hundred short work placements ever outscore a smaller programme that leads to sustained employment?

On accountability, even those who welcome the change note that the deepest shift is from promises to performance. With at least one KPI published for every contract of £5m or more and poor delivery able to count against future bids, an ambitious pledge can become a contractual, reputational and future-procurement liability, which is why bid teams and the delivery colleagues who will own the commitments increasingly need to write them together.

Sector bodies raised versions of all these concerns during the consultation concluded in June 2025; none can be settled until the guidance is published.

What to do while waiting

For contracting authorities, the practical work is sequencing:

1. Map the procurement pipeline against the 1 January 2027 commencement date
2. Decide a transition posture contract by contract
3. Hold final tender documentation until the evaluation methodology arrives

For suppliers, it is preparation:

1. Map existing social value activity to Good Jobs and Skills
2. Assemble the workforce data that will sit behind pay, conditions and progression commitments
3. Treat any draft commitments as provisional until the sub-criteria land.

With reporting moving from thirty-three Standard Reporting Metrics to a smaller set of higher-stakes published KPIs — commitments that can be passed down the supply chain and counted against future bids — it is worth lining up early the delivery colleagues who will own and report them, rather than leaving them to bid teams alone.

Both sides should also plan for training: the PPN asks in-scope organisations to circulate it to commercial, procurement and contract management roles, with eLearning to follow through the Government Commercial College alongside Cabinet Office Community of Practice sessions, using the transition period to build that understanding across those functions before the new Model applies.

In a nutshell? For everyone, the real publication event is the autumn guidance. PPN 026 tells us what the government wants; the guidance will tell us how it works. We will publish a full analysis as soon as it appears.