Developing a social value plan
I’ve been busy in recent weeks developing a Social Value Plan to support a developer’s bid for a major urban housing development scheme.
It’s been a privilege to work on this alongside LDN Collective colleagues. I’ve realized how much well-defined and thought through social value proposals can benefit local communities and have a positive effect on people’s lives.
LDN Collective has exciting plans to grow its presence in the social value and co-design space. This will draw in wide-ranging capabilities across its members, including community engagement, participative co-design, stakeholder consultations, digital engagement, advocacy & storytelling, net zero neighbourhoods – not to mention socio-economic data gathering and analysis that I (and others in LDN Collective) are involved with… the list goes on!
Social Value is continuing to grow in importance, and it’s something I think all professionals across all sectors of the built environment will become increasingly interested in over the years to come.
Key legislation
The Social Value Act first came into force in 2013. It required UK public authorities to consider how services they procure can improve the economic, social, and environmental well-being.
Since then, policy has continued to evolve and progress. The Act was updated in June 2018, when central government announced it would explicitly evaluate social value for most major contracts. This update also required social value to be given a minimum weighting of 10% in procurement evaluations.
In 2021 the government required application of the Social Value Model, as a consistent framework for all public sector procurement activity. This summary guide gives a useful overview.
The Procurement Bill, due to come into effect in October 2024, further increases the importance of social value in procurement evaluations – which must now account for local, area-specific objectives and social, environmental and community-specific considerations (beyond purely economic value for money). However, some view the bill as not going far enough, noting it still fails (in its current form) to make explicit mention of social value.
Planning and analysis
Whilst government sets the overarching parameters, it is up to market operators to show they can deliver social value. Demonstrating positive outcomes requires robust analysis.
A range of tools and methods are available to help measure and quantify such benefits, including the Social Value Portal (suitable for a range of different project types) and HACT’s Social Value Bank (focused mainly on social housing).
The most important thing, however, is ensuring social value is in-built into the design and planning approach from an early stage.
This includes assessing the areas of greatest socio-economic need in a given area and how to design and configure the proposed scheme to address these needs and deliver the greatest possible benefit – as well as directly engaging with the local community and those impacted by the scheme as much as possible.
If you’d like to discuss any of the above topics with me or learn more about recent social value work I’ve been involved with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!