Social Value: Delivering Beyond Cost

This whitepaper summarises our featured Social Value podcast, produced with Morgan Sindall and Nottingham Trent University.

The Social Value Act was introduced in 2013, in an effort to help public sector organisations cope with these challenges and get more benefit from the buying power they do have.

The biggest pay off for communities was expected to come from the built environment.

With construction the sixth largest source of employment in the UK, accounting for seven per cent of GDP, the industry undoubtedly has the capacity to elicit societal benefits which extend far beyond bricks and mortar.

• But six years on, how effective has this mandate been?
• How can we even define social value?
• And are we at risk of missing important qualitative changes by attempting to quantify it?

These are some of the questions discussed in this podcast summary, which examines whether construction in the UK is truly delivering beyond cost.