Populo Living has put Social Value at the heart of housing delivery in the London Borough of Newham.
We had the invaluable opportunity to chat with Lerato Marema, Community Development Lead and Delivery Manager, to discuss how Populo Living is unlocking Social Value across the development life cycle and meeting the needs of the community in partnership with suppliers.
Watch the full interview below:
Or scroll down to read the interview!
💡 Need a refresher on Social Value? Read our 'What is Social Value?' article
What does Social Value look like for Populo Living?
Populo Living is Newham’s housing delivery company, and we're essentially set up to deliver affordable housing – that's the core part of our Social Value delivery.
But we really want to extract Social Value at every part of the development cycle, at design stage, construction stage, and occupation stage. What that looks like in practice is working with our design team to deliver benefits for the community and having upfront conversations with our contractors about the delivery of their commitments.
The other aspect of our Social Value delivery at Populo Living is thinking about Social Value leases. Really understanding what our commercial tenants can provide and making sure it's a holistic approach.
We are a relatively new organisation and that provides us with a lot of opportunity to shape what our Social Value looks like – taking best practice and examples shared by Social Value Portal and making it a comprehensive but also innovative way of delivering Social Value for the community that we serve.
From the very onset we wanted to make sure it was serving the community in Newham as a primary purpose. Understanding the socioeconomic context was the first step. We commissioned a Local Needs Assessment with Social Value Portal looking at the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. That gave us that raw, in-depth data about the challenges, but also some of the opportunities within Newham.
💡Consultant Fiona McCully explores the benefits of Socio-economic Assessments and Social Value assessments
It helped us to identify some of the intersectional issues around, health and wellness, employment and education. We then spent about six months internally working with key stakeholders across the business to refine our commitments. That process was interesting because we were able to see what different areas of the business consider important to them.
After that process, I worked with my team to really pull those ideas together, with the help of Social Value Portal, and develop our strategy. Most importantly, we set out objectives that are going to stretching but that also reflect what we learned as part of the initial phase of the Local Needs Assessment.
What does good Social Value delivery looks like in the context of housing and real estate?
Successful outcomes look very different to different people for a wide range of reasons. Equally, the capacity for the sector itself to deliver Social Value will vary vastly. A contractor might have loads of capacity to deliver Social Value outcomes linked to apprenticeships, whereas a one-man band technical consultant might not have that capacity.
I’m able to work quite closely with communities directly to co-design the Social Value outcomes that they want to see. For me, this is the sweet spot – being able to reflect on what's needed in that particular area at that particular time. Because it’s not going to be the same within a borough, let alone between different boroughs.
Understanding that context is really important. We can often get caught up in making sure that we report – which is a really important step in the process. But by taking it step further and reviewing what impacts that we have, as opposed to the measurement aspect, I think we can really start to stretch the overarching impact that we have.
The other aspect is “co-design” in terms of what a community or beneficiaries would like to see – and that’s captured within the TOM System. There's always going to be something that a community is passionate about, and it's leaning into that. So for me, what success looks like is being intentional in your delivery and your outcomes, but doing that in partnership with the beneficiaries, the communities that you are working within.
The Social Value TOM System
The project that I work on is our flagship regeneration project, known as the Carpenters Estate in Stratford. That's set to deliver around 2000 new homes over a 10–15-year period. It took about three years to develop an outline master plan, and there was an opportunity to think alongside the community about what neighbourhoods would look like. That process involved lots of workshops, discussions and feedback design, what the streets would look like, what the area would feel like.
That master plan was truly co-designed with the community in mind, and it was a journey, but we ended up with something that is really reflective of what a community wants to see in the future.
How can design decisions directly impact the community?
When it comes to making design decisions that directly impact the community, the master plan process opened up conversations with the community about what they wanted in the interim. Not five to 10 years later, but now. That resulted in the creation of a Community Hub, which is open to the, the community and provides lots of different services and activities for free.
The process allowed us a real flexibility to test new ideas. For example, we've got resident guardians that work within and around that community centre. It allows us an opportunity to test some of the outcomes that people want to see, whether that's related to health and wellness or to education.
What’s your advice for real estate organisations that are early in their Social Value journey?
I think leaning into your area of expertise has a lot of power – knowing how your area of expertise can contribute to a community or a project.
But also understanding where your limitations are. I think that's probably the biggest piece of advice – you don't have to do everything. Recognise what you do well, and partner with charities and social enterprises to fill in the gaps where you don’t have the expertise. That provides an opportunity to innovate, but also have real, genuine, and tangible impact.
Also, take time earlier on in the design phase to think about what you want to achieve. And be open to not doing that process alone; bring organisation on board to help with that thinking process as well. There's opportunity in working collaboratively with people.
What impact has your partnership with Social Value Portal had?
I think it’s been immense. We are a relatively new organisation and working with Social Value Portal provided the framework for consistency in terms of how we measure Social Value outcomes ourselves, but also a consistent tool to measure how our suppliers input. It means that we're all speaking the same language and it allows us to track progress.
That's one of the biggest challenges – you set out to do something at the beginning, but tracking progress is fundamental and Social Value Portal allows you to do that in real time. You avoid the risk of commitments being set out and not being achieved.
Also, some of the opportunities presented by working with Social Value Portal are about refining the ask for each project and having the flexibility to select different Measures for projects. That’s important, because successful Social Value looks different for different projects and communities, so having a bespoke approach to delivery has been fundamental to us.
And for me, having that advisor and the information that's shared, that best practice, has been really helpful to get us going. It's been amazing working with Social Value Portal.
What does the future hold for Social Value at Populo Living?
I think it’s being really specific about the ask. The more we define our Social Value outcomes, the better we get at asking our suppliers to deliver what's most important. So, rather than trying to achieve a million things, doing one thing a million times better than we did before.
Is there anything that you are particularly proud of in your role?
Creating our own Social Value strategy – a company-wide strategy that is forward looking and recognises the importance of social impact. I'm also proud of starting to deliver on that ourselves as an organisation, but also filtering that to our suppliers; we're starting to see the benefits of that.
And directly supporting local people, hyper-local businesses, and organisations. That's where the sweet spot is really, when you start to see that real impact directly affecting people that we work with and serve.
Looking for more Social Value inspiration?
See how other businesses are delivering Social Value to communities in our Social Value success stories.
Or if you're looking for help embedding Social Value into your real estate projects, explore some of our solutions.
.svg){kind=small}
