The Social Value of Housing webinar

Unpacking the social value of housing this audio presentation explores the practical guidance the industry needs to ensure people get the homes that they need.

Please note: this event was adapted to a webinar format and can be viewed here.

Unpacking the social value of housing this audio presentation explores the practical guidance the industry needs to ensure people get the homes that they need.

Social value is currently poorly understood, though it is high on local authority and GLA agendas. This conference will set out current best practice in this field, offering practical guidance for leveraging social value to facilitate the development of equitable places that foster wellbeing. It will argue for a standardised approach to social value.

There is so much more to social value than the creation of jobs and apprenticeships so there is much to explore. Well designed buildings and places can create social value by encouraging interaction, facilitating active lifestyles and positive emotions, as well as community learning and a sense of empowerment developed through participatory design and community engagement. Even the materials used for creating housing have an inherent social value if they are locally sourced and draw on local culture and traditions.

Increasingly social value is being measured, monetised and mapped, most notably through Social Return on Investment. This means that it can take its rightful place next to environmental value and economic value (the triple bottom line of sustainability) in procurement decisions. Not only this, social value has the potential to be used as a trade off in discussions of planning gain and as a tool for holistic public sector decision making.

As social value becomes easier to capture through advances in technology it can also be fed into digital models, inform feedback loops and insurance premiums, to name just a few potential applications. Social value can also be used to trace the considerable positive impact of the public sector, changing narratives around public sector delivery and funding.

Leadership is needed to make social value simple to use by a range of audiences. Bringing together key experts in the field this audio presentation aims to be an important stage in this process.

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