Admiral Group PLC is one of the UK's largest insurers. Founded in Cardiff in 1993 and still headquartered in Wales, it now serves around 11.8 million customers across the UK and Europe, supported by more than 15,000 colleagues. Insurance, by its nature, puts the company close to the consequences of a changing climate, from flooded homes to storm-damaged cars, so climate resilience is an important consideration for the business.
Through its Green Futures climate resilience funding and a three-year partnership with the National Trust, Admiral has backed natural flood management across the UK, restoring peatlands, wetlands and woodlands to help slow water flow and support local resilience, while contributing to habitat restoration.
But, the Social Value TOM System didn't fully capture the value of that work. A restored wetland or a newly planted woodland shows up as a story, not a measured Social Value outcome.
"While the TOM System offers a strong baseline, it didn't fully capture the outcomes from some of our environmental partnerships, particularly under our 'Green Futures' climate resilience funding."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
So Admiral commissioned Social Value Portal to built the measures they needed: four in total, three for nature and one for the digital skills that open up good work.
As we built them, it struck us that they answered a much wider problem.
The Planet theme is one of the least adopted parts of the Social Value TOM SystemTM. Not because organisations aren't doing good environmental work, but because the standard hadn't always made it easy to capture. So we asked Admiral a question: would they let us add these four measures to the TOM System, for everyone to use? They agreed.
What began as bespoke work for one company has now been made available to the wider Social Value community, and all four measures are available to every Social Value Portal member today.
Why we think members will welcome these
We were glad to bring these measures into the standard, because they fill a gap we'd already seen in the data. Social Value Portal's 2025 State of the Nation report found environmental impact to be the most underused part of Social Value reporting: organisations are doing the work, often at scale, but it rarely shows up in their measured outcomes the way jobs, skills and community investment do.
Part of the reason is that environmental Social Value has tended to mean a familiar few things, water saved, waste, carbon reduction. Worthy, but narrow. It leaves out the rewilding, habitat creation and nature-based climate mitigation that more organisations are investing in. These four measures widen that aperture, so restoring a wetland or creating an urban forest counts in the same defensible, comparable way a carbon saving already does.
Why environmental impact belongs inside Social Value
There's a long-standing assumption that environmental work sits in a separate box, owned by ESG or sustainability reporting.
Flooding, nature loss and a changing climate land hardest on the communities least able to absorb them, which makes them social problems as much as environmental ones.
"Climate change, flooding and environmental degradation have very real social consequences, particularly for the communities and customers we serve. Including environmental outcomes within Social Value allows us to connect nature-based interventions with issues like community resilience, wellbeing and long-term impact."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
This is the logic behind the three new Planet measures.
Meet the measures
NT138: Creation and/or restoration of woodland ecosystems
This new measure values support for creating or restoring woodland (broadly, half a hectare or more with meaningful tree canopy). The proxy value for this measure captures carbon sequestration, cleaner air, biodiversity gains, flood mitigation and the wellbeing that comes from spending time in woodland.
NT139: Creation and/or restoration of wetland ecosystems
This new measure values the creation or restoration of wetlands, ground saturated with water for all or much of the year. The proxy value for this measure reflects the vital carbon storage role that wetlands play in a thriving ecosystem, along with water quality improvements, biodiversity gains, flood mitigation and the human wellbeing benefits of being near water and wild places.
NT140: Creation and/or restoration of urban forests
This measure values trees in urban settings: streets, parks, gardens and urban woodland. The proxy value for this measure captures carbon, air quality, urban cooling effects, improved biodiversity, reduced flood risk to urban areas and the wellbeing of access to green space where people live.
What Admiral was trying to solve
Admiral's environmental work runs through its Green Futures climate resilience funding, anchored by a three-year partnership with the National Trust on natural flood management.
In its first year Admiral committed more than £1m across five sites, including peatland restoration in Eryri, reconnecting the River Liza to its floodplain in the Lake District, and catchment work at Holnicote in Somerset. The principle across all of them: work with the landscape to help slow and store water, protecting communities while restoring habitat.
"Through initiatives with partners like the National Trust, we're supporting wetland and woodland restoration as part of natural flood management, helping to support resilience in communities at risk of flooding. We wanted to quantify the wider societal value of these landscape-scale interventions, and not just the environmental outputs."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
The problem was never the work. It was evidencing its full social value in a consistent, defensible way. Admiral's tree planting with Stump Up for Trees and its urban Tiny Forests with Earthwatch hit the same wall: real delivery, hard to value.
What changes in practice
For organisations with environmental commitments, the shift is from describing activity to consistently valuing its impact.
"These measures give us the ability to move from describing environmental activity to consistently valuing its impact within our social value reporting. It's still early days, but they provide a clear, structured way to evidence the benefits of nature-based solutions, from flood resilience to biodiversity."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
In 2025, Admiral's wider community investment generated more than £26m in Social Value, calculated through the Social Value Portal platform and independently validated, evidence that this work stands up to scrutiny when it's measured properly.
NT137: Digital skills for employment programmes for designated groups
The fourth measure launching in this release moves from Planet to Work.
This new measure values training that helps people facing barriers to employment gain job-related digital skills, counted only once a trainee completes the programme. The proxy reflects the expected increase in that person's earnings, with secondary benefits to health and social capital.
It captures work many organisations already do but rarely value consistently. Admiral’s King's Trust Digital Skills Pathway has helped more than 800 young people build the confidence and skills to use technology for work and education.
A measure like this turns that effort into evidence, and like the others, it's now available to every member.
Start before you're ready
For organisations unsure how to begin capturing the Social Value of environmental or community programmes, Admiral's advice is the best note to end on.
"Start simple and don't wait for perfection. Social value frameworks like the TOM System provide an accessible way to begin capturing impact, even for complex environmental programmes. Our approach is rooted in imperfect environmentalism: taking action, learning as we go, and improving over time."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
That ethos, imperfect environmentalism, is one we'd encourage other organisations to borrow. It's easy to put off environmental Social Value reporting until you have the perfect programme, the perfect data, the perfect measure.
Admiral's approach is the opposite: act now, measure what you can, and improve as you go.
"Working collaboratively with Social Value Portal has also helped us innovate, with some of our bespoke measures now feeding into the wider TOM System framework."
Jess Moore, Group Social Purpose Lead, Admiral
The four measures are available to every SVP member now.
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To learn more about Admiral’s approach to Sustainability and Social Value, visit the Admiral website
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If you're an SVP member: Contact the support and delivery team to start using these measures.
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