Ensuring Social Value Requirements Are ‘Proportionate’: What Commissioning Authorities Need to Know

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Under the Procurement Act 2023, every social value requirement in a public procurement must be proportionate to the nature, cost, and complexity of the contract. Disproportionate award criteria, weightings, or KPIs risk legal challenge and create barriers for suppliers – particularly SMEs and VCSEs.

Yet confusion persists about what “proportionate” actually means in practice. This guide:

• Sets out the legal foundation
• Explains how to apply the proportionality test at each stage of the procurement cycle
• Offers practical steps to ensure your social value requirements are defensible and effective

Why Proportionality Matters Now

The Procurement Act 2023 does not treat proportionality as a standalone objective. It embeds the requirement at every critical decision point:

• Section 23(2)(d) requires that award criteria are a proportionate means of assessing tenders, having regard to the contract’s nature, cost, and complexity
• Section 20(3) requires that the procurement procedure itself is proportionate
• Section 22(1) requires that conditions of participation are proportionate

Put simply: any action must be appropriate to its aim, but no more burdensome than necessary. This aligns directly with the shift to Most Advantageous Tender (MAT), where contracting authorities must balance cost, quality, and social value in a way that is demonstrably appropriate to the contract.

For social value, if your requirements go beyond what the contract’s subject matter, scale, and market context warrant, your procurement is exposed.

There is a practical incentive too: proportionate requirements are more manageable for procurement teams that are already stretched, and more realistic for suppliers to deliver.

What “Proportionate” Means in Practice

The Act, the PPN 002 Guide, the Sourcing Playbook, and the NHS Social Value Playbook all address how to put proportionality into practice. Together, they point to five tests.

1. Select outcomes that match the contract

• Focus on one policy outcome from the Social Value Model, in line with Cabinet Office guidance, with additional outcomes used where justified by contract scope and complexity.

• Choose outcomes related to the contract’s subject matter. A large on-site workforce makes employment and skills criteria proportionate; a digital services contract makes construction apprenticeships a stretch…

2. Calibrate your weighting

The 10% minimum applies to the total score, but overall weighting should reflect the contract’s nature, complexity, and cost.

• Going above 10% is appropriate where the market is mature. Any departure from standard weighting approaches should be supported by clear rationale and documented through market engagement and procurement design decisions.

• Where market engagement indicates that applying the full weighting would reduce competition due to low market maturity, authorities may need to adjust how social value is assessed within the overall evaluation model, ensuring the approach remains proportionate and defensible.

3. Refine the model award criteria without overloading

• The model award criteria are largely ready to use, but refine them: remove irrelevant sub-criteria, target a specific skills gap, or narrow the scope.

• Do not assess suppliers against general corporate policies. The PPN 002 Guide is explicit: criteria based on corporate responsibility statements rather than contract-specific deliverables are not proportionate.

4. Keep the door open for smaller suppliers

• Section 12(4) requires authorities to have regard to barriers faced by SMEs. Social value requirements should allow suppliers to offer solutions they can integrate into their operating model for the contract.

• If your specification can only be met by a large organisation with an existing national programme, it is probably disproportionate. Requiring suppliers to pay for access to a social value platform is another common barrier — and one that is straightforward to avoid.

5. Test it with the market

• Preliminary market engagement is the most effective tool for getting proportionality right. Not sure whether your social value questions pass the test? Ask your suppliers – they will tell you. For lower-value contracts, existing market intelligence and category-specific analysis will usually suffice.
• Authorities should also ensure that decisions on outcomes, weightings, and assessment approaches are clearly documented, creating an audit trail that demonstrates how proportionality has been considered and applied. This is critical in the event of scrutiny or challenge.

Proportionality Beyond the Tender

Proportionality does not stop at contract award. How you set and monitor social value targets matters just as much as how you assessed them at bid stage:

• The PPN 002 Guide distinguishes between social value KPIs and performance indicators – the deciding factor is market maturity. Where the market is mature and contract value supports it, social value targets should be contractual KPIs. For less mature markets, lighter-touch performance indicators are the right call
• Review frequency should be proportionate too. A light-touch review at start and close may suffice for low-value contracts; high-value or complex contracts need structured monitoring against defined KPIs

Poorly designed measurement approaches can themselves introduce disproportionate burden or distort delivery expectations, particularly where fixed assumptions are applied regardless of contract context. This is where infrastructure matters. A measurement framework that weighs additionality and deadweight proportionally – rather than applying universal fixed proxies – puts the proportionality principle into the methodology itself:

• The Impact Evaluation Standard (IES) takes this approach: every calculation is traceable to ONS and public sector sources, context-sensitive, and documented for evaluators. Thrive’s platform applies this methodology in practice, supporting consistent and transparent measurement across contracts.
• Thrive’s Local Needs Analysis helps authorities tailor requirements to each contract’s context, and its no-supplier-fee model removes one of the most common sources of disproportionate burden.

• A single platform with consistent data collection templates also addresses a related problem: when suppliers across a contract portfolio are reporting in different formats with different levels of detail, monitoring becomes disproportionately time-consuming. Standardised collection with built-in prompts and deadlines keeps suppliers on track and gives you comparable data without chasing it.

Proportionality Makes Social Value Better, Not Smaller

Proportionality is not about doing less social value, but about getting the level right.

Requirements calibrated to the procurement’s nature and scale are easier to deliver, more credible to evaluators, and more defensible if challenged.

They reduce delivery risk, improve supplier participation, and ensure commitments can be monitored and evidenced effectively.

They also produce better outcomes, grounded in what the contract can achieve.

For social value leads making the case internally, this matters: proportionate, evidence-based requirements are far easier to champion across the organisation because they are defensible, results-oriented, and demonstrably achievable.

They also lay the foundation for year-on-year improvement; building a cumulative record of social impact that strengthens with each procurement cycle.

Thrive’s platform and the Impact Evaluation Standard are built around this principle: rigorous, calibrated measurement with the transparency commissioning authorities need. If you are reviewing your social value approach, let’s talk.

Practical Questions on Proportionality in Social Value Procurement