Our Social Value | Apprenticeships and Inclusion | Glaxtons

Glaxtons Consulting

Our social value

We ask clients to evidence this properly. Here is ours.

Twelve-plus students through our summers. Funded tutoring for four of them, all of whom got three A stars. Apprenticeship routes run through London local authorities. Social value is scored in every substantial UK public tender and we write it for a living, so a consultancy recommending commitments it has never made itself is worth discounting. This is ours, at our actual scale, including what we do not yet measure.

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Why this page is specific rather than warm

Most social value pages are a stock photograph and a sentence about believing in community. We spend our working lives telling clients that an evaluator scores evidence and discounts sentiment, so it would be difficult to justify writing one of those.

The commitments below are real and they are at the scale of a firm our size. We are not claiming a national programme. What we can say is that the things described here happen, that directors do them personally rather than delegating them, and that we have learned from doing them what is genuinely hard about delivering social value rather than writing it.

Where a number would make this page stronger, and it would, the honest position is that we are not yet measuring outcomes rigorously enough to publish them. That is the same advice we give clients: publish what you can evidence, name the gap, and fix the measurement rather than estimating around it.

What we actually do

Tackling economic inequality

Twelve students, real work, and four sets of A-level results

More than twelve students have spent a summer with us, doing real work rather than a fortnight of filing: reading live tenders, sitting in on bid reviews, drafting content that went into submissions. We funded private tutoring for four of them through their A-levels, and all four achieved three A stars. We also help with personal statements, because a UCAS statement is a piece of persuasive writing under a word count, judged by someone you will never meet, which is the same skill this firm sells. Public procurement is an industry almost no sixth-former has heard of, it pays well, and it does not require a particular degree or a particular background.

Tackling economic inequality

Apprenticeships with London local authorities

We work with London local authorities on apprenticeship routes into bid and procurement work. It matters that these run through local authorities rather than through us alone, because that is how a placement reaches young people who would never find their way to a consultancy in SE1 through a personal contact. Bid writing is a profession that recruits overwhelmingly through networks, which is precisely why it stays closed.

Tackling economic inequality

Mentoring young people from disadvantaged backgrounds

Directors mentor young people from disadvantaged backgrounds personally rather than delegating it. The useful part is rarely careers advice in the abstract. It is the specific things that are invisible if nobody in your family has done professional work: how an interview actually runs, what to do when you do not understand something in a meeting, what it is reasonable to ask an employer for, and how to write to someone senior.

Wellbeing

People with lifelong conditions build careers here

We employ people managing lifelong illness, and we structure work so that is a fact about someone rather than a limit on them. In practice that means flexibility around treatment and bad days, honesty about capacity in both directions, and judging output over presence. This work is deadline-driven and we are not pretending otherwise. What we can control is whether a fluctuating condition ends a career in it, and it does not have to.

Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity, meant operationally

We are an equal opportunity employer and we treat that as a set of decisions rather than a statement. It shows up in where we advertise, in interviewing on demonstrated ability rather than on polish, and in making reasonable adjustments a normal conversation rather than a difficult one. Our full position is on the equality, diversity and inclusion page.

Why access to this profession matters more than it sounds

Bid and proposal work is a good career. It pays well, it does not require a specific degree, it rewards clear thinking and careful writing more than credentials, and there is persistent demand for people who can do it. It is also almost invisible: no school careers programme mentions it, and most people who do it arrived by accident from somewhere adjacent.

A profession nobody has heard of recruits through personal networks, and recruiting through personal networks is how an industry stays closed to people who do not have those networks. That is the specific inequality we are positioned to do something about, and it is why our effort goes into visibility and access rather than into donations.

It is also why the local authority apprenticeship route matters more than taking placements directly. A young person who already knows someone who knows us does not need our help finding us.

On environmental impact, an honest note

We are a professional services firm with a small footprint, and we are not going to present that as an environmental achievement. Our material contribution to fighting climate change is not our own emissions, it is the work: we write bids for energy, decarbonisation and retrofit programmes, and helping a capable supplier win a decarbonisation framework moves more carbon than anything we could do in our own office. We would rather say that plainly than pad this page with a recycling policy.

Common questions

Why does a bid consultancy publish its own social value?

Because we sell social value writing, and a consultancy that cannot evidence its own is not credible. Clients increasingly ask for a supplier's own equality and social value position as part of due diligence, and evaluators notice when an adviser recommends commitments their own business has never made. There is also a practical reason: everything on this page has taught us something about what is hard to deliver, which is the difference between advising on social value and having done it.

What is changing in UK social value from January 2027?

PPN 026 replaced the previous Social Value Model in August 2026 and applies to procurements commencing from 1 January 2027. The threshold moves to £1m, the minimum weighting doubles, and the previous 33 metrics become six. For most suppliers the expensive part is not the weighting change but the metric change, because a social value library built against the old 33 does not map cleanly onto the new six. Our full explanation is on the PPN 026 page.

Do you help clients write social value commitments you have not made yourselves?

Sometimes, and we are clear about the difference. A client committing to fifty apprenticeships on a national contract is operating at a scale we are not. What we will not do is help write a commitment we can see the client has no mechanism to deliver, because an undeliverable social value commitment is a contractual liability that surfaces at year two, long after the bid team has moved on.

What do you not yet measure?

Outcomes beyond the point people leave us. We can tell you that more than twelve students have come through, that we funded tutoring for four who all achieved three A stars, and what we did with them. What we do not yet publish is what happened next: degree completion, where people ended up working, or the sustained employment rate of apprenticeships we have supported. We have not tracked that rigorously enough to publish it. Saying so is more useful than an estimate, and it is what we would tell a client to do in the same position.

Can you help us build a social value programme rather than just write about one?

Yes, and this is often the more valuable engagement. Writing a strong social value response for an organisation with nothing behind it produces a scoring risk and a delivery problem. Building the programme first, so the commitments are real and measurable, means the writing becomes straightforward and the commitments survive contract management.

Reviewed 22 August 2026.

Building a social value programme, not just a response

If you are writing commitments you are not yet set up to deliver, the writing is not your problem. Tell us where you are and we will say so honestly.

Social value

What are you bidding, and what can your organisation genuinely deliver today?

We ask clients to evidence this properly. Here is ours.

Why this page is specific rather than warm

What we actually do

Twelve students, real work, and four sets of A-level results

Apprenticeships with London local authorities

Mentoring young people from disadvantaged backgrounds

People with lifelong conditions build careers here

Equal opportunity, meant operationally

Why access to this profession matters more than it sounds

On environmental impact, an honest note

Common questions

Why does a bid consultancy publish its own social value?

What is changing in UK social value from January 2027?

Do you help clients write social value commitments you have not made yourselves?

What do you not yet measure?

Can you help us build a social value programme rather than just write about one?

Building a social value programme, not just a response

Social value

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