NHS & Healthcare Social Value
You already know the clinical impact of what you do. This is about everything else.
NHS suppliers understand their core contribution. A better diagnostic catches cancer earlier. A surgical innovation cuts recovery times. You live and breathe that impact. What the NHS is now asking is a harder question. It wants to know how you contribute to the health of communities. Not through your product. Through how you hire, buy, operate and invest.
Trusted by NHS suppliers and healthcare organisations
Why Now
The NHS has changed what it expects. Most suppliers haven't caught up yet.
From April 2022, all NHS procurements have required a minimum 10% weighting for net zero and social value. The Evergreen Assessment became the annual mechanism for tracking that progress.
But the NHS Social Value Playbook, updated in 2025, changed the frame. Social value is now tied directly to the government's five missions and specifically to building an NHS fit for the future. That means health inequalities. It means Core20PLUS5. It means suppliers being asked what they are genuinely doing for the communities their work touches — not just what their carbon target is.
Most suppliers haven't made that shift yet. The ones who do it properly, and early, are the ones who stand out.
What we hear most often
These are the problems Sonar was built to solve.
"We know Level 2 requires a social value strategy. We just don't know what that actually looks like for a clinical supplies company."
"Our procurement team understands Net Zero. The operational team doesn't know where to start on social value."
"We're a clinical supplier. Orthopedic implants. Vaccines. How does social value connect to what we do?"
"We achieved Level 2 last year. We need to get to Level 3 but we're not sure what that evidence actually looks like."
Not by working backwards from the assessment criteria. By going into communities, understanding what they need, and building the evidence trail around that.
Our Approach
Start with health inequalities. The compliance follows.
The NHS's own guidance is clear about what good social value looks like for healthcare suppliers. Employment pathways for people with health-related barriers to work, partnerships with community health organisations, supply chain choices that support local economies, outreach into deprived communities.
Most suppliers are already doing some of this. They just haven't named it as social value, haven't connected it to their Evergreen submission, and haven't built it into a strategy with evidence behind it.
That's where Sonar comes in. We use the CWaNA™ methodology to understand the specific community context your business operates in. We identify where your work genuinely connects to health inequality reduction. We build a strategy around that and produce the evidence trail the Evergreen Assessment requires.
◉ The result is a social value strategy that holds up because it's grounded in something real. Not because it was written to pass an assessment.
How Sonar Works in Healthcare
Two strands. One methodology.
For NHS suppliers
We work with NHS suppliers at every stage of Evergreen Assessment, from first submission through to Level 3 and Level 4 progression. That includes reviewing your raw data and identifying gaps, building your carbon reduction plan, developing your social value strategy using CWaNA™, and constructing the evidence your assessors actually need to see.
The Evergreen Assessment is annual. Sonar works with suppliers year on year, building on previous submissions and deepening the evidence trail each time. Our clients don't start from scratch each year. They build on something that grows.
What this includes
Evergreen Assessment support across all levels
Social value strategy development rooted in community intelligence
Health inequalities framing aligned to Core20PLUS5
Annual review and progression planning
Evidence documentation built for assessors, not just for internal reporting
For NHS trusts and healthcare organisations
NHS procurement teams are under growing pressure to embed genuine social value criteria. The 2025 Playbook is explicit: social value outcomes should be co-designed. That means doing the community intelligence work before the questions are written, not after the contract is awarded.
Sonar helps NHS trusts and integrated care systems understand what the communities they serve actually need from healthcare investment. We run structured community needs assessments using CWaNA™, support procurement teams in developing meaningful social value questions, and help build strategies that reflect genuine local health inequality priorities rather than national boilerplate.
New for 2026
The Collaboration Programme
Building something that doesn't exist yet.
There is almost no peer learning network for NHS suppliers around social value. Plenty of conferences. Occasional webinars. Nothing structured where suppliers can go to talk honestly with peers about what they're finding difficult, what's working, and how to make progress.
Claire is changing that. She's running a pilot programme with a cohort of NHS suppliers, bringing them together each month to work through their challenges collectively. A gap analysis, training, and group sessions where real problems get solved in real time.
The programme is designed for SMEs through to larger corporate suppliers. The first cohort is running now. A second cohort launches later in 2026.
Who this is for
Clinical suppliers to the NHS: orthopedic implants, robotic surgery, diagnostics, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, surgical consumables
Healthcare FM and facilities organisations working on NHS estates and capital programmes
New NHS suppliers completing their first Evergreen Assessment
Established suppliers who achieved Level 2 and want to progress with genuine evidence behind them
SME sub-contractors whose principal clients are asking for Evergreen Assessment capability they don't yet have in-house
NHS trusts and ICBs who want to build social value properly into procurement cycles, not bolt it on afterwards
Claire
Healthcare Social Value Lead
Why Sonar is different in this sector
Claire's background is in clinical roles, then pharma and diagnostic sales, then commercial leadership across the healthcare sector. She joined Sonar full time three years ago to build the NHS offering from the ground up.
That background matters for two reasons. First, Claire can sit with a clinical supplies company and understand how they operate — as a peer, not as an outsider arriving with a methodology. Second, she's built Evergreen Assessment evidence that has actually passed. She knows what Level 3 looks like in practice because she's produced it.
Sonar has already supported NHS suppliers including Agamatrix and Eco Ninjas through Evergreen Assessment. We know what the assessors want to see. We build toward it from the foundations.
Evergreen Assessment Explained
What it is and what it actually requires
The NHS Evergreen Assessment is the annual tool through which NHS suppliers demonstrate progress toward the NHS Net Zero target. It measures maturity across four levels.
Net Zero Foundations
Primarily about Net Zero. Carbon reduction plans, emissions data, environmental targets.
Strategy Required
A social value policy and strategy are required. The supplier has to show they've thought about how their business contributes beyond their product.
Evidence & Impact
Active delivery and measurable outcomes. Evidence of community engagement, health inequality action, and documented impact. Not commitments. Evidence.
This is where most suppliers underestimate what's needed. A corporate responsibility statement won't get you to Level 3. What assessors want is a genuine strategy, grounded in community intelligence, with a documented trail of how it was built and what it achieved.
CWaNA™ builds that trail from the bottom up. And because the assessment is annual, the methodology compounds. Each year builds on the last.
Relevant Frameworks
Talk to Claire
We don't do sales pitches. Claire will have a straight conversation about where you are, what the assessment or procurement requires, and whether Sonar is the right fit.
If we are, we'll tell you. If we're not, we'll tell you that too.