Social Value Toolkit for housing & architecture (in progress)

The aim of this project is to develop a simple practical toolkit for use by architects, planners, housing providers and local authorities to establish a baseline of social value for housing projects, to make sure social value is properly embedded into procurement processes and to demonstrate the social value of good design.

Social value is the quantification of the relative importance that people place on the changes they experience in their lives. Some, but not all of this value is captured in market prices. It is important to consider and measure this social value from the perspective of those affected by an organisation’s work (Social Value UK, 2018).

The project is a bottom up initiative developed by the Architecture Research Practice Leads group in response to an increasing need for evidence of social value required by local authorities through procurement. Led by Flora Samuel, the Toolkit is a collaboration with the RIBA, Mapping Eco-Social Assets (MESA) a Newton funded project in collaboration with Santo Tomas University in the Philippines and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence CACHE.

The architecture and planning professions need to be prepared to take advantage of significant changes which may at last give them the chance to demonstrate their value in a language that policy makers and funders can understand, to drive long term quality up the housing agenda, and to support the development of forms of evaluation other than financial.

In the UK the 2012 Social Value Act which requires publicly procured projects to demonstrate their social value is starting to gain traction and the UK Government recently made changes to the currency of the Treasury Green Book, the basis of government cost benefit analysis, from economic value to socio economic value.  It is worth noting in this context discussions around UK Building Information Modelling (BIM) Maturity level 4 which involves the demonstration of ‘Better Outcomes for Society’. Other significant policy activity in this area includes the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) 2015 act which lacks a methodology for determining the social value of built environment initiatives.

After an initial scoping meeting at the offices of Assael Architects in London a seminar on social return on investment (SROI) was organized at HTA LLP in London in June 2018 attended by about 30 architectural practitioners, housing providers and researchers with presentations from Jenny Thomas (MHCLG), Graham Randles (NEF) and Kelly Watson (ARUP and University of Manchester). Next steps were discussed at the Research Practice Leads meeting in July and we are in the process of developing a comparative table of outcomes frameworks for demonstrating the social value of housing as a basis for the toolkit to be discussed at a further meeting in September. The steering group includes representation from NEF, ARUP, Assael Architects, HTA LLP, Atkins and the RIBA. The hope is to develop the Social Value Toolkit over the course of the year to be rolled out via the RIBA Practice Committee, together with an accompanying reflective narrative to be published in a special edition of the journal Architectural Design on Social Value edited by Flora Samuel in 2019. Flora Samuel is also Chairing a session at the RIBA Smart Practices conference at Cambridge in September 2018 on social value with inputs from Jenny Thomas (MHCLG) and Kelly Watson (ARUP).