National Social Value Quality Framework opens for consultation

Today marks the start of something significant – for us, our clients, and anyone responsible for driving, delivering, or evaluating social impact.

Social Value Business – in partnership with Social Value Quality Mark CIC – is releasing a comprehensive framework, over 100 pages, of social value best practice into the public domain, free of charge.

The aim? To support better quality delivery and create clarity for UK buyers and suppliers.

This is best practice rooted in the Social Value Quality Mark® – the UK’s highest standard, which has accredited around 400 organisations to date – together with decades of our professional expertise in leading, driving and consulting on social value within organisations across all sectors.

It’s truly developed by practitioners, for practitioners, and has support from the likes of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Laing O’Rourke, National Grid, AtkinsRealis and the many other valued advocates acknowledged on our website.

To be clear, this volume of combined expertise would normally sit behind a paywall.

So why are we doing it?

We established SVB and SVQM several years ago with distinct purposes – SVB exists to support leaders at all stages of their social value journey to evolve, modernise and generate social legacy.

Social Value Quality Mark CIC is a proudly independent social enterprise founded to help us deliver on our social mission. It assures, supports and celebrates the highest standards of social value, with an accreditation pathway from Bronze to Platinum.

Both organisations share fundamental values of advocating for social fairness, sustainability and thriving communities, based on authentic social value delivery.

In my view, this is too important to hide behind a paywall.

The social value market is maturing

We now have a plethora of tools, models and proxies for calculating value. Public procurement reform is pushing higher expectations and scrutiny.

Yet we know from experience – and from our clients – that it remains something of a ‘wild west’. While models such as MeasureUp and National TOMs offer solid routes for calculating value, there has been a gap in terms of ‘whole-of-lifecycle’ standards.

Buyers and suppliers are having to spend too much time interpreting requirements – reporting is inconsistent, dubious claims are rife, and there are no established benchmarks. Meanwhile, communities are losing out on the benefits repeatedly promised.

What should social value governance look like? What does a great strategy consist of? How should it be performance managed? And how do we ensure genuinely meaningful delivery and innovation?

These are the gaps that the National Social Value Quality Framework aims to address: a full lifecycle approach to best practice, from concept to culture.

Importantly, it’s not about replacing or competing with existing models. It’s about taking a step back and asking: how do we set a common language and benchmarks that drive best value from everything already out there, while filling in the missing pieces?

Access the first 5 standards in draft format

The resulting NSVQF comprises 9 Standards, split for easy reading into an Overview document, 9 Standard chapters and Appendices. We invite you to discover it for yourself, free of charge, with the caveat that it is not used for commercial purposes and that Social Value Business is fully credited.

The first 5 Standards are available now, with the rest due to follow in November 2026.

We’ve also created ‘cheat’ versions – quick summary documents for those who want to dive straight into the Standards without all the extras. These are slit into supplier organisation and commissioner/LA versions.

Access the draft NSVQF and consultation >

Have your say in raising the bar

Together with the documents, we are also launching a public consultation and invite you to have your say.

If we’re going to prevent value-washing, we need to stop accepting vague claims, unverified numbers and social value that exists only in bid documents. We need standards that reward genuine impact.

We need a sector that is confident enough to challenge poor practice and mature enough to celebrate the organisations doing it right.

That’s why your voice matters. This consultation isn’t a tickbox exercise. It’s an opportunity to shape a national benchmark that protects communities, strengthens procurement, and restores credibility to a sector that is too important to be undermined by weak practice.

Whether you’re commissioning, delivering, evaluating or advocating for social value, your insight will help ensure the NSVQF is both ambitious and grounded in reality.

This is our moment to raise the bar together.