Content

Salford City Council - Record of Decision
 
I
Paul Dennett, City Mayor, in exercise of the powers contained
within the City Council Constitution do hereby approve the content of the social value
and impact strategy and action plan for 2026-9 period, approve
actions around people, processes and tools in order to deliver on
action plan and approve the publication of the strategy and action
plan, alongside the directory of social value
opportunities.
The Reasons are:
Over
the past 12 months, the council’s internal Social Value &
Impact Group (SV&I Group) has come together with a renewed
focus and commitment to maximising social value and impact in order
to improve outcomes and opportunities for local communities and
residents.  Social value is a strategic
enabler for delivering our corporate plan priorities. By better
coordinating and targeting the social value efforts of our
corporate, supplier, developer, and regeneration partners, we can
more effectively address persistent inequalities in the city. The
SV&I Group have seen a number of successes this year including
the development of a directory of social value and impact
opportunities to be shared with businesses, development of a
creative brand for social value and impact in Salford and the
publication of town centre developer guides for Pendleton, Swinton
and Eccles to support community engagement and outcomes through
regeneration.
Identifying that although Salford City Council has some
excellent practice in social value impact, there is always more we
can do for improving resident and community outcomes. Local Growth
and Place funding has been used to develop a strategy and action
plan to strengthen this area of work over the coming three years,
with strategic support from Social Value Portal. By involving
officers from across the council and key stakeholders, the action
plan sets out how we make the most of the available social value
levers to increase the opportunities and outcomes for residents and
communities and ensure that we target social value efforts
corporately and from suppliers, developers, regeneration partners
towards priority areas and to reduce inequalities.
Options considered and rejected were:

Take
no action – this would be inconsistent with the
council’s ambitions for good growth
Assessment of Risk:
Low:
Salford City Council is proactively developing its practice around
social value and impact to support improved outcomes for local
people and communities
The source of funding is:
There
are no direct financial implications of this report.

Legal Advice obtained:
The
report sets out the Council’s Social Value and Impact
Strategy and Action
Plan, and summarises the work and progress done to date by the
Council, with the strategy for future action in increasing social
value in its activities.
 
The
introduction of The Social Value Act in 2013 made it mandatory for
public sector buyers to consider social, economic and environmental
benefits when procuring goods and services. Since then, the
Procurement Act 2023 and PPN002
have built on the way the public sector thinks about
social value and reiterates that in-scope contracting authorities must consider
social value when awarding contracts.

Specifically, in-scope organisations must "apply a
minimum 10% weighting (or equivalent measurement) of the total
score, for social value". When doing so, in-scope authorities
should utilise the Social Value Model, whose use has been mandatory from 1 October 2025. The PPN 002 Social
Value Model is a menu of options from which In-scope Organisations
select the most appropriate social value outcomes and criteria for
their contract.

The Model provides authorities with a pre-built set
of goals and success criteria that they can use when implementing
social value in their tenders.

In recent years, public
contracts were awarded to the “Most Economically Advantageous
Tender” (MEAT) under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.
However, Section 19 of the Procurement Act 2023 updates this
principle, allowing authorities to award contracts based on the
“Most Advantageous Tender” (MAT)
instead. This change
empowers authorities to take a broader view of value and base
procurement decisions not just on cost, but on Social Value
benefits like those described in the body of the report, which can
be supplemented if needs be by the Open Access TOM (These,
Outcomes, Measures) System – a free to access tailored set of
Social Value measures.
Financial Advice obtained:
Whilst there is no direct budget impact from approving the
report itself, any resource implications to deliver the action plan
would go through the usual approval routes.
Procurement Advice
obtained:
No
direct procurement implications with the content of this report.
Procurement have been involved in the development of the strategy
& action plan and will continue to play a key role in our
combined efforts to drive additional social value and impact
through our contracting activity.

HR Advice obtained:
There are no direct and immediate HR implications arising from
this report. However, delivery of the Social Value & Impact
Strategy and Action Plan will require teams across the council to
align resources to support implementation, and this needs to be
balanced alongside other council priority workforce change
programmes. HR & OD has and will continue to contribute
corporate impact data and lead actions to develop our corporate
impact, including maximising impact through the Step into Salford
programme.  Improved workforce data and analysis around
volunteering leave will be available later in 2026 when iTrent is
implemented for the organisation.  

Climate Change Advice obtained:
Responding to climate change is a key element of the activities
supported by social value and the directory identifies a number of
ways that we and our suppliers, developers and regeneration
partners can practically commit to measures and local community
organisations around climate change. 
Officers leading climate change and zero-carbon programmes have
been involved in the development of the directory of social value
opportunities to ensure it signposts to actions, initiatives and
organisations to take action on climate change.
The following documents have been used
to assist the decision process:

Social value and impact strategy 2026-29
Directory of social value and impact opportunities

 
Contact Officer:  Nina Howells               
Telephone number: 01617932834

This
decision is subject to consideration for briefing purposes by the
Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration. The
Lead Member is supportive of the decision.
This
decision is not subject to consideration by another Lead
Member.
The
appropriate scrutiny to call-in the decision is the Growth and
Prosperity Scrutiny Panel                       

 

Signed:
             Paul
Dennett                  
Dated:         24.02.26                         
.
                       
City Mayor
 

For Democratic
Services use only

This decision was
published on 24.02.26                                            

This decision will
come in force at 4.00 p.m. on 03.03.26 unless it is called-in in accordance with the
Decision Making Process Rules.