Social value calculator

The values in this calculator are proxy values — monetised equivalents that translate social outcomes into a comparable financial figure. They are not estimates invented for convenience. They are published by recognised bodies and used by the same evaluators who score your tender response.

The primary source for most commitments shown here is the National TOMs framework (National Themes, Outcomes and Measures), maintained by the Social Value Portal. National TOMs proxy values are derived from established datasets including the HACT Social Value Bank, the New Economy Unit Cost Database, and academic research reviewed by the framework's technical committee. Local authorities and housing associations that have adopted National TOMs will use these same figures when scoring your response.

For commitments relating to carbon, the proxy value shown (£69 per tonne of CO₂ avoided) is drawn from HM Treasury's Green Book guidance on the social cost of carbon — the standard reference for UK public sector appraisals.

The totals produced by this calculator are gross figures. If your buyer has specified SROI methodology, you are required to apply three adjustments before claiming a social value total: deadweight (the proportion of outcome that would have occurred anyway), attribution (the share attributable to your organisation versus others), and displacement (any negative effects your activity creates elsewhere). Without these adjustments, an SROI figure is not compliant — and trained evaluators will identify the omission. HelpMeBid applies these adjustments in the full product, with published defaults you can review and override.

Not all UK buyers use National TOMs. PPN 06/20 tenders use the Government Model Award Criteria, which are not directly mapped to proxy values in the same way — they are scored against qualitative and quantitative commitments aligned to five themes. If your tender is PPN 06/20-specified, the figures here are still useful as an internal sense-check, but should not be quoted directly in your response without cross-referencing the buyer's stated evaluation criteria.

Public sector social value evaluators are trained. Many local authority procurement teams have adopted the National TOMs framework precisely because it gives them a standardised methodology — which means they know, to the pound, what a training day or an apprenticeship week should be worth. When a bid response quotes a figure that doesn't match the framework's published value, it stands out immediately.

Inflated or internally generated proxy values — figures a bid writer has invented or derived from a different source without disclosure — carry a specific risk in evaluated tenders. Some buyers will simply mark them down as unverifiable. Others will reject the claim entirely and rescore the commitment at zero if the source cannot be cited. A single unsourced figure can undermine the credibility of an otherwise strong social value section.

The reverse is also true. Consistently citing real, published proxy values — and showing the source alongside the figure — signals to evaluators that your organisation understands the methodology. It demonstrates that your commitments are genuinely deliverable and properly quantified, not padded to hit a target number. In competitive procurements where social value accounts for 10–20% of the total score, that credibility gap between a sourced and an unsourced response is often the difference between winning and losing.