Earlier this month, I was pleased to speak at HACT’s ‘The Future of Social Value’ conference.

The event, which was curated by HACT and the Northern Housing Consortium, included sessions on social value, sustainability and ESG, social value and procurement and social value and health.

It is great that HACT keeps pursuing the idea and measurement of social value, which was a key theme of the conference. 

I spoke in a session called ‘Making the S more measurable and meaningful in which I argued that:

1. The ‘S’ is complicated and I don’t think all the nuances can be measured in the SRS. 
2. We should all try and keep it simple and I would love it if the sector could collate around one or two measurements like we do on measuring carbon use reduction, but that is difficult. 
3. There is huge social value in the basic social housing product like low rents, quality homes and lifetime tenancies. These are in the SRS and we all need to talk about that value more. 
4. Doing things that are meaningful are much more important than doing things that are measureable, and that trying to measure your outcomes can sometimes lead to you not meeting the need effectively. 

I would like to thank HACT for inviting me to speak at this important event and I look forward to more discussions on social value in social housing.