How the TOM System™ Supports Social Value in County Durham 

What is the National TOM System™? 

For professionals in the sphere of social value, the TOM System™ supports and enables our core operations. This tool, created, developed, and reviewed annually by the Social Value Portal, standardises the measurement and validation of social value into data that anyone, from stakeholders to contract managers, can understand.  

TOMs is used nationally to record and report social value. It provides a common methodology that can be tailored to the requirements of the project and the local area, and categorises social value initiatives so institutions can measure the impact of their actions on their communities. Because it can be used by any organisation on a local or national scale, the TOMs framework provides a consistent minimum reporting standard that allows for comparison between different social value projects regardless of sector, industry, or location.  

Is the measurement of social value mandatory?  

In June 2020, the Government introduced the Social Value Model to detail how public sector bodies can embed social values into their operations. Following amendments to the model in October 2025 in accordance with Procurement Policy 06/20, all UK government bodies are mandated to measure social value in their operations. The Social Value Portal built the TOM System™ to allow users to track social value delivery and provide a more comprehensive measurement of the scale of these projects. 

The framework allows the measurement of social value delivery in a quantifiable manner using metrics already recognised and understood by national and local authorities. It can measure the output of a project, support bid submissions, and aid contract management by creating a universal structure which demonstrates how social value can be generated through the actions of a public, private, or third sector provider.  

How is social value measured using the TOM System™?

By quantifying the success of achieving the outcomes for each theme, social value can be measured within the TOM System™. For example, if the goal of a social value project was to promote local skills and employment, an organisation can measure how much work was generated within a community by counting how many local people were employed by the scheme.  

Depending on the remit of the organisation and its goals for their social value project, the impact can be measured against any single or combination of the framework’s themes to ensure all aspects of the potential positive social impact. 

Is the Social Value Portal TOM System™ just for national organisations or can it be used on a local level?    

By selecting the relevant theme and its outcomes for a social value project, the framework can be adapted to fit a variety of initiatives anywhere in the UK and on any scale.

Whether your initiative is locally-focussed and community-led or to be adopted on a national level, the TOMs framework provides a functional system to quantify its impact for recording and reporting.  

How does the TOM System™ aid the procurement and bidding processes?

Measuring social value is a legal requirement for national and local government, therefore making this information readily available during the procurement process helps to quantify the positive outcomes of a contract assignment for the relevant communities. 

As the TOM System™ was developed in response to the Social Value Act 2012, the system is easy to embed into government procurement protocols. TOMs is nationally recognised and used by the private, public, and third sectors, converting social value projects into a monetary value; using it to measure your operations’ social value impact will provide this data in a recognisable structure that allows for easy comparison across businesses and organisations.  

How does the TOM System™ support local initiatives like County Durham Pound? 

As the framework is nationally recognised, it is easily accessible to any organisation – private, public, or third sector – allowing for easy adoption regardless of their background or sector.  

County Durham Pound uses the TOM System™ to measure the impact of our partners’ and supporters’ social value initiatives. We work with organisations and businesses from a wide variety of sectors, including construction, IT, manufacturing, education, and community support. Each partner or supporter can generate social value in different ways, therefore the TOMS framework is essential to recognise and record the specific means that they contribute to our goals for supporting County Durham.