Social Value in Salford

At the Social Value Awards 2025, Salford City Council was highly commended in three award categories for its outstanding contribution to social value. Celebrating innovation, collaboration and commitment to creating lasting impact, the awards recognise the council for Radical Collaboration, Excellence in Real Estate and Planning and Creating Capability. 

At the Property Week ESG Edge Awards 2025, Salford City Council won Excellence in Community Engagement for its pioneering social impact guides.

At the Social Value Awards 2023, the council was commended for social value within the Public Sector Leadership category.  

At the Social Value Awards 2024, it won Excellence in Planning for embedding social value into Salford’s Local Plan becoming England’s first council to require major developers submit a social value strategy. 

Salford is also the first Social Enterprise City in the north west of England, awarded by Social Enterprise UK (SECUK), who lead on the world’s largest network of businesses with a social purpose, working together to create a fairer economy and a more sustainable future for everyone.

The council’s policy aims to ensure a ‘social return’ from its investment by securing social value from: 

• Doing responsible business and being a good employer
• Regeneration, housing and planning activity
• Business, economic growth/skills and work activity
• Internal providers, mutuals and joint venture partnerships
• Applying Salford City Council’s procurement strategy (Adobe PDF format) - which focuses on maximising social value 

Salford City Council aims to continue securing better outcomes via:

• New procedures and processes for securing social value in construction, goods and services
• Ensuring new developments bring public benefits eg affordable housing/public realm
• Asking businesses based and operating in the city to sign up to the City Mayor’s Employment Standards Charter, which includes paying the Real Living Wage and commitments to social value and equalities 
• Its recruitment practices, volunteering policy and engagement programmes
• Its partnerships and facilitating connections with local organisations 

You can download the full Social Value and Sustainability Policy as well as a summary of it at the bottom of this page.

Our new social value and impact strategy sets out how we will secure further positive outcomes for local people and communities. 

This builds on all the different ways in which the council already secures social, economic and environmental outcomes for the city in the form of social value and impact. 

This is through:

• Contractual social value commitments from suppliers via the procurement process
• Social value commitments secured via the planning process in line with our social value and inclusion policy
• Local businesses delivering social value and impact via their corporate social responsibility policies and practices outside of any formal commitment
• Council delivered programmes and initiatives that provide a social, economic or environmental impact to residents and communities e.g. Build Salford, Step into Salford, Mayor’s Employment Charter, Zero Carbon programme, health improvement programmes
• Initiatives that support community organisations and our Salford CVS
• Its own recruitment and employee wellbeing and support programmes

Salford City Council also wants its suppliers, developers, regeneration partners and responsible businesses to make a difference. Here’s how: 

• See our pioneering directory for practical ways to deliver social value and impact, aligned to the city’s priorities.
• Businesses can sign up to Salford's Employment Charter, and show they are putting Salford first, buying in Salford and setting the standard for good employment.
• All organisations can look for opportunities to increase social value – whether it’s core (direct wellbeing impacts of a service or a contract, e.g. apprenticeship schemes) or added (the value over and above the goods and services) such as social development, local employment, ethical purchasing, low energy use, low waste and emissions. 
• All organisations can be social value organisations by displaying strong values and ethos which are reflected in their internal and external relationships, operations and delivery. Partnership and collaborative working is also a priority.

The council is a member of the Salford Social Value Alliance which is a partnership between the public, private and voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors. It was formed to make Salford a better place and the city is already leading the way in building Social Value.