Public contract scoring doubles job-creation weighting from 10% to 20%

The government is rewriting how it scores bids for public contracts. Social value, currently worth 10% of the marks on contracts of £5m or more, will be worth 20%, and the whole of that 20% will be based on job creation.

Until now that portion of the scoring covered equality and diversity work, net zero commitments and post-Covid recovery measures. Those categories are being replaced rather than added to.

The Cabinet Office set out the new weighting. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is due to tell bidders they must prove they are creating jobs, supporting young people into work and filling local skills gaps.

Three things earn extra credit under the new model: local jobs paying above the minimum wage, training that addresses a local skills shortage, and 45-day work experience placements for young people. The placements are singled out as carrying particular weight.

The rules apply to British and international firms alike. There is no carve-out for overseas bidders.

The stated reason is youth unemployment. Office for National Statistics figures show more than a million people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training.

Burnham ran a comparable scheme as mayor of Greater Manchester, where the number of young people in work rose during his time in office. He has said he wants "growth in every postcode".

First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, effectively the deputy prime minister, called the current procurement process a "tick-box exercise". Cabinet Office Minister Mark Ferguson said firms winning government work "have a responsibility to give back".

Not everyone approves. Greenpeace UK's head of politics, Ami McCarthy, said environmental protection and youth employment are "mutually beneficial and one shouldn't come at a cost to the other", and argued companies should still be held to environmental targets.

For a founder selling into the public sector, the practical change is where the marks sit. A carefully written net-zero section that used to score points now scores none of the social value 20%.

The threshold matters too. The doubled weighting applies to contracts worth £5m or more, so smaller lots are not covered by the figure the Cabinet Office has given.

What a bid team needs on file is different from what it needed before: headcount it will hire locally, wage levels against the minimum wage, the specific skills gap the training addresses, and whether it can actually run 45-day placements. That last one is an operational commitment, not a paragraph.

The Gazette has not seen the guidance text or an implementation date. Bidders with live tenders should establish which scoring regime applies to them before submitting.