PPN 002’s Social Value Model Missions Explained and Applied: Break Down Barriers to Opportunity

How To Implement The New Social Value Model Missions in your Business

This blog looks at PPN 002 and the Social Value Model published in February 2025. This Model applies only to in-scope contracts published between October 2025 and August 2026, some of those published between February 2025 and October 2025, and some of those published between August 2026 and December 2026. From January 2027, it is superseded by PPN 026.

In February, a new Social Value Model was released alongside PPN 002, to replace the original Model (and PPN06/20) by October. This Social Value Model includes missions that aim to break down barriers across the country.

In this series of blogs, we’ll dive deep into each of the Missions presented in the new Model to show how your organisation can demonstrate more social value and win more public sector business in the months and years ahead under PPN 002. 

But if you’re ready to explore just what “Break Down Barriers to Opportunity” means for social value, read on!

What are the Missions?

In July 2024, the Labour Party was elected on a platform of “five missions to rebuild Britain” – broad socio-economic goals that it would pursue across the full range of policy areas while in government. 

The five Missions are as follows:

PPN 002 and the Social Value Model launched in February 2025 state in no uncertain terms that central government public procurement needs to promote these Missions by delivering social value. 

How do the Social Value Model Missions Help Break Down Barriers to Opportunity?

Two of the eight Policy Outcomes relate to this Mission:

• 6. Employment and training for those who face barriers to employment
• 7. Creating a pipeline of opportunities for the contract workforce, reducing barriers to entry for under-represented groups.

It’s worth looking at each of these in turn in greater detail.

Employment and Training for those who Face Barriers to Employment

This is broken down into three sets of Model Award Criteria (MACs):

• 6a. Create employment and training opportunities particularly for those who face barriers to employment and/or who are located in deprived areas, and for people in industries with known skills shortages or in high growth sectors.
• 6b Demonstrate action to increase the representation of disabled people in the contract workforce
• 6c Demonstrate action to identify and tackle inequality in employment, skills and pay in the contract workforce

6a is identical in wording to MAC 2.2 from the original Social Value Model under “Tackling Economic Inequality”, while 6b in turn uses the exact same wording as MAC 5.1.

6c covers the same ground as two of the old MACs: 

• MAC 5.2: Support disabled people in developing new skills relevant to the contract, including through training schemes that result in recognised qualifications.
• MAC 6.2: Support in-work progression to help people, including those from disadvantaged or minority groups, to move into higher paid work by developing new skills relevant to the contract.

Creating a Pipeline of Opportunities

This objectives comprises two MACs:

• 7a. Remove barriers to entry for young people and under-represented groups, facilitating access to pre-work training, placements, apprenticeships and other educational and developmental opportunities
• 7b. Creating a pipeline of opportunities for the future contract workforce.

These MACs represent a change of emphasis from the old SVM. The latter never talks explicitly about “young people” (although talk about apprenticeships and training is implicitly primarily directed towards them). Could this change of wording imply a shift in priorities towards young people compared to other disadvantaged groups in practice?

MAC 7b is new, but clearly bears a close “family resemblance” to the MACs under the “Kickstart Economic Growth” Mission, with its emphasis on job creation being fair and sustainable beyond the scope purely of the contract in question. But with Cabinet Office advice urging authorities and suppliers to focus on one Outcome per contract, there could be a risk of this MAC being neglected in practice. 

Standard Reporting Metrics

With ten of the Standard Reporting Metrics (SRMs) in the new Model dedicated to it, “Break Down Barriers to Opportunity” is the second most-detailed Mission after “Kickstart Economic Growth” (with 16). 

Eight of that ten relate to the “Employment and training for those who face barriers to employment” Outcome, and just two to “Creating a pipeline of opportunities”.

• 6ai. Number of employment opportunities created under the contract for people from groups underrepresented in the workforce
• 6aii. Number of apprenticeship opportunities (Level 2, 3, and 4+) created or retained under the contract for people from groups underrepresented in the workforce
• 6bi. Number of employment opportunities created under the contract for disabled people in the workforce
• 6bii. Number of disabled people on apprenticeship schemes (Level 2, 3, and 4+) under the contract, by UK region
• 6ci. Number of people in the workforce employed under the contract with flexible working arrangements in place.
• 6cii. Number of people from groups under-represented in the workforce on apprenticeship schemes (Level 2, 3, and 4+) under the contract, by UK region
• 6ciii. Number of people from groups under-represented in the workforce on other training schemes (Level 2, 3, and 4+) under the contract, by UK region
• 6civ. Number of employed prison leavers who additionally receive learning, upskilling and reskilling in their first 6 months of employment to support them in continued/future employability opportunities, under the contract
• 7ai. Number of people from groups under-represented in the workforce employed under the contract
• 7bi. Number of outreach activities

Although there is a lot of crossover between Outcomes and MACs as we’ve seen, the SRMs point to a subtle change of emphasis from the old Model to the new Model. 

• Old Model metrics look at the number of full-time equivalent roles created (FTEs) for the under-represented groups or the percentage of the contract workforce those FTEs represent
• New Model SRMs talk exclusively about the number of roles 

Presumably this is not unintentional. The very first SRM in the new Model makes the point of excluding measurement by FTE: 

• 1ai. Number (in roles, not FTE) of employment opportunities created under the contract, by UK region.

That bracketed section is not repeated, but its use in the first SRM of 33 – many of which share an otherwise identical structure – make it clear what is intended. 

Why does this matter? SRMs are intended to standardise how various social value measures are reported between authorities and suppliers – resolving a major bone of contention around the old SVM. The Cabinet Office – and the contracting authorities that report in to it – want suppliers to report in these terms, not alternatives. 

But while this is an improvement in many respects, the SRMs as stated are fairly rigid. They don’t allow much nuance, tailoring to specific projects and local needs, or provide scope for the kind of innovation in social value delivery Preliminary Market Engagement is meant to promote. For example, the SRMs don’t single out youth workforce representation at all (6ai), when young people are singled out in the MAC.

Nevertheless, the Guide to the Social Value Model makes it clear that:

“Where the deliverable is not listed in the model list of SRMs or it is not appropriate or proportionate to use one of the SRMs, the authority should agree an appropriate metric with the supplier.”

What You Can Do Now

1. Map Old to New Social Value Model Mission Requirements

If you’re familiar with the old Social Value Model, compare the two to see which Missions and MACs your organisation is best-placed to deliver on. We’ve shown above where old MACs can be more or less closely mapped onto new ones. 

2. Consider Legacy

The goal of “Creating a pipeline of opportunities for the contract workforce” is something that hasn’t been given a direct focus in this way before. While sustainable job creation has – of course – been an important social value objective from the beginning, it has always been couched in separate terms of (i) creating jobs and (ii) providing people with skills. The old Social Value Model allowed “box ticking” bids to win out by prioritising exclusively benefits provided directly under the contract – and ruling out consideration of longer-term consequences. This Mission encourages and incentivises long-term thinking and planning. 

When it comes to long-term legacy, a lot of companies have chosen to focus on particular groups of disadvantaged people – for example, prison leavers. Amey’s CRED Programme provides a great example, while organisations at an earlier stage in the journey could benefit from reaching out to make contact with charities like Novus. 

3. Play to Your Strengths

Contracting authorities are being encouraged to build tender requirements around promoting just one Policy Outcome “to focus and streamline the process for suppliers”. You will be able to concentrate the effectiveness of your bids by building your social value offers around the demands of individual Outcomes and their MACs, rather than spreading your efforts out thinly. 

4. Boost your SME/VCSE Spending 

The National Procurement Policy Statement (published at the same time as PPN 002) requires in-scope organisations to set three year targets for direct spend with SMEs (from 1/4/25) and two year targets for VCSEs (from 1/4/26). 

• If you are an SME or VCSE this requirement – along with the explicit ruling out of volume criteria – gives you a meaningful advantage. 
• If you’re not, start diversifying your supply chain to include more of these organisations now. If you don’t know where to start, there are membership bodies such as Social Enterprise UK that offer services and have free online directories to help you identify social enterprises

5. Measure Your Way to Success with Thrive

If you’re not already using the Thrive platform, get a demo today. 

• Thrive is the only social value measurement platform authorised to use the Impact Evaluation Standard, which has been built specifically around the Social Value Model’s requirements and is overseen by an independent Steering Committee of recognised industry experts
• The new Social Value Model prioritises transparent in-contract reporting against social value deliverables. Thrive provides user-friendly, highly customisable tools and dashboards, with the ability to store pictures and context alongside data for better storytelling, and with no extra licence costs or even a need to log in for third parties submitting data for you. It even includes a state-of-the-art report builder for those of you without access to design resources!
• Our detailed case studies from satisfied customers speak for themselves and show the wide range of uses cases – besides winning more public sector business – that our social value module is being put to. 

Quantity and quality of data promises to be key to succeeding with PPN 002. This is yet another step beyond the era of “show them your company policies” towards a true requirement to demonstrate social impact.