Backing British jobs and skills: Why we welcome the government's new procurement rules

Yesterday, the government announced that public spending will judge suppliers on the skills and jobs they create. From January 2027, local social value's weighting on government contracts worth £5m or more doubles, from 10% to 20%. Every organisation bidding for a share of the £90bn spent on public contracts each year will now score points for building good jobs, tackling local skills shortages, and helping young people into work.

We welcome it. Here's why, and what it means if your organisation bids for public sector contracts.

Why we welcome the government's procurement changes

For years, social value in procurement has worked like a form to fill in rather than a promise to keep. First Secretary of State Louise Haigh put it plainly: it's "been a tick box exercise that fails to deliver the positive change that people feel in their pocket and see in the places they live." Skills and jobs are now worth a fifth of the score on major contracts: enough to decide who wins.

Two priorities stand out to us.

The first is the focus on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). Over a million under-25s in the UK currently fall into this group and we’ve published our own plans to support that group here. A procurement rule that specifically rewards suppliers for building pathways for young people is a direction worthy of support.

The second is the accountability mechanism. For major contracts, government departments will increase transparency for performance against these goals and publish annual progress reports. This makes it doubly important that social value commitments are actually upheld.

This is procurement finally rewarding the organisations that build real capability in their workforce, not just the ones that write a good bid.

How Multiverse already invests in skills and early talent

We've worked in this space for ten years, training over 40,000 learners with 1,600+ employer partners, including more than 150 public sector organisations such as NHS Trusts, local councils and police forces. In June, we announced a new AI-first early talent apprenticeship launching this September, aimed at exactly the group this policy is designed to reach: young people who need AI and data skills to compete in today’s job market.

None of this is new work for us. It's the same work, with government now backing it through how it spends £90bn a year.

What the new social value rules mean if you bid for government contracts

If your organisation supplies central government, or wants to, this is worth building into your strategy now.

From January 2027, a fifth of the score on contracts of £5m or more will come from local benefit, including skills development, apprenticeships and support for young people. That means the strength of a company’s commitment to workforce development, backed by real numbers, becomes a genuine differentiator in the bid itself. Vague commitments to social value won't hold up against a competitor who can show concrete plans. 

Three things are worth doing before the rules take effect:

• Get your skills investment measurable. If you can't show pay rises, promotions, or productivity gains linked to training, you can't evidence it in a bid.

• Build youth pathways now, not after you've won the contract. Suppliers will likely benefit from a credible pipeline for NEETs and young people before they're asked to prove one.

• Treat public reporting as part of the deal. The government will hold suppliers to their commitments publicly. Bids should only promise what can be delivered and shown.

This is the same discipline we apply to our own impact reporting. Our 2026 Impact Hub shows what that looks like in practice: 57% of our learners gain a promotion, pay rise or increased responsibility, and 77% say their programme made them more productive.

Backing British jobs and skills, together

Public spending backing British jobs and skills, in every postcode, is a change worth supporting. We've built our business around the same premise: that skills investment produces measurable returns for people, employers and the country. Government just decided to score for it.

If you're preparing a bid and want to talk through what a credible skills and early talent story looks like, get in touch.

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