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The architecture of public services in the UK is in transition and focusing on the social enterprise model aimed at delivering social value is not a bad place to start.

Across the National Health Service, local authorities, neighbourhood schools and libraries, our public service institutions are being remodelled.

The transition is a response to two drivers that are well established as the headline challenges for our public services. Firstly, changes in wider society are also changing the demands placed upon the state. Local and central government will ultimately be judged on how they respond to issues such as an ageing society and climate change, or persistent challenges like poverty, reoffending or families in crisis.

Such long-term tests of our public services such as those described above are also being amplified by the second pressure: the wider economic climate we face in the short and medium term, and the subsequent downward pressures on budgets.

Although these twin drivers can seem far removed from the day-to-day delivery of a residential care service, the running of a local library or after-school clubs, their impact is reverberating throughout the public sector, across every service and local area in the UK.

There is, however, another emerging test facing public services that has also come out of these headline challenges; and it is public service spin-outs who are pointing the way to delivering services which maximise the social value of the delivery of services to communities.

Within organisations who have or are in the process of spinning out of the public sector, there is an inescapable sense that you are with a group of people who feel liberated and enthused in what they are doing. It is the public service ethos and then some.

This is undeniably in part due to a sense of empowerment and control that can come along with new governance and ownerships structures. The Transition Institute (TI), the emerging organisation at the forefront of this new wave of public services reform, is starting to unpick the issues and complexities involved in this shift. The TI launched its first publication ‘Social Value Ethos’ on this subject with leading practitioners alongside Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society and Sir Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO and TI Board member on Monday 21st November.

This publication is about how an emerging group of public sector entrepreneurs have responded to the pressures on public services by spinning their service out of the public sector, creating what we have termed a social value ethos that has been ingrained into the fabric of the emerging organisation.

If you work in local or central government, the chances are you might not have paid much attention to the Public Services (Social Value) Bill currently going through Parliament. For those who work with or deliver public services, however, the chances are that the Bill may come to have a very real impact on your work for years to come.

The Bill aims to reform the commissioning process by asking public sector bodies to consider how they can improve the social, economic and environmental well-being of their areas, through public sector contracts. By making people aware of the advantages of using services that offer a greater social value, we can achieve more sustainable, innovative and efficient public services.

Of course many organisations have the elements of a social value ethos already hard-wired in them. What the shift towards social value commissioning may offer independent public service delivery organisations though, is an opportunity to see this ethos become a very real competitive advantage over large private sector organisations who often have the capital and scale to successfully bid for public sector contracts.

The changes in the BIll, should they come into full force, will have a profound impact on the commissioning and procurement of public services in the decades ahead. It will shift the focus from the bottom-line price or cost of a service towards the overall value of the outcomes delivered.

This will also include the value of the process of achieving the desired outcomes – in other words, the awarding of public service contracts will no longer simply focus on whether you deliver the required results, but will also take into account how you get there.

As a result, the approach, social impact and ethos of an organisation will become crucial aspects of public service commissioning and procurement.

Furthermore, the European Union is also supporting the premise of social value in public services. A European Parliament resolution declared that the “lowest price” criterion should no longer be the determining factor in awarding public contracts. Instead, the resolution suggests contracts should be awarded to the “most advantageous tender in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits, taking into account the entire life-cycle costs of the good, service or work.”

For spin-outs, charities and social enterprises looking to deliver public services either locally or nationally, the shift to social value commissioning could therefore mean that the deep added value that comes with our work is finally taken into account by the people who buy things on behalf of government.

A chink of light on a long, dimly lit road perhaps, but a real chink none the less.