Social value can seem to be an elusive idea which is difficult to turn into real policy and practice.

Many local authorities are grappling with the practicalities of taking account of social, environmental and economic value in commissioning and procurement decisions, as they are now required to do under the Public Service (Social Value) Act 2012.

What does social value mean? Is it principally about asking for extra benefits from the providers councils procure services from? Is it about using certain types of providers, like social enterprises? Is it about prioritising social benefits over cost?

In the report Lambeth LBC recently published with Collaborate and the Transition Institute, Social Value, Lessons from Lambeth, we attempt to unlock some of these debates and provide clarity for councils designing their own approach to social value.

We argue that seeing social value as being principally about additional benefits from providers is missing the bigger picture about the fundamental changes in their communities and places that councils are trying to achieve.

If ‘social value' is not to be sidelined as an unaffordable luxury at a time of cuts and increasing demand on services, then it is essential that councils think hard about what ‘value' we achieve through all the activities we fund and support.

Social value is about securing maximum impact on local priorities from the use of public resources. In Lambeth we are also clear that ‘value' is not a concept that has any inherent meaning outside of the local context. 

It will be determined by local needs and local aspirations, and crucially, by local people. The first question that councils should ask is: ‘what does the community value?'

This question is the essential first step in the commissioning process, creating the outcomes which will guide decisions about the use of the council's resources throughout the rest of the commissioning cycle.

The second question is about the role the community can play in achieving
those outcomes.

We believe that there is value in the ‘how' as well as the ‘what', and that supporting local people to make changes in their lives and their places is essential both to delivering the changes we want to see but also to building stronger and more resilient communities – therefore achieving impact across other outcomes.

This is about moving away from a provider-consumer model of public services towards a model which sees value as co-created with communities.

It is also about considering the impact of activities or services across wider outcomes.
Outcomes-based commissioning down ‘outcome silos' is likely to miss the additional impact on wider outcomes – or social value – which can be achieved through investing in a certain activity or a sometime provider.

If social value is about maximum impact on outcomes, then all decisions must take account of impact as widely as possible.

In practical terms, this is likely to require the building of a common outcomes framework which is applied consistently across the organisation.

It may also require councils to agree a sequence or priority for key outcomes, acknowledging we cannot have everything all at once, and that focusing on a smaller number of outcomes may ultimately enable change in other areas.

Focusing on outcomes is likely to have other profound implications for the way councils work and make decisions about how to invest their resources.

We will have to get much smarter about the relationship between investment, activity and impact, perhaps using models such as ‘theory of change' to set out the path by which we see change happening. We will also need to learn how to be sure that demonstrable impact can be attributed directly to our own activity and investment decisions and create ways of measuring impact on outcomes.

Lambeth's experiences of moving towards a social value commissioning model has revealed all these implications and more.

Social Value Procurement Frameworks are an important part of the wider commissioning process, but only as a stepping stone towards more fundamental
change. Social value cannot be left to one part of the organisation – it needs
to be part of the wider commissioning process and the wider system change that
commissioning requires.

We are not suggesting that Lambeth has all the answers to realise our ambitions for social value commissioning or that there will be an easy path to achieving this.

However, we hope that with this report we can help expand the extent of people's
aspirations and expectations of what social value means. If we can do that, then there is a real prospect of public funds being used more efficiently to deliver outcomes that reflect the aspiration and ambition of our local communities.

Anna Randle is the co-operative implementation lead at Lambeth LBC

www.collaboratei.com to view Social Value: a commissioning framework, Lessons from Lambeth