“Social value is about transforming people’s lives for the better”

As we begin the countdown to the Festival of Sustainable Business Exhibition, Rin Hamburgh, founder of festival comms partners RH&Co, spoke to Rachael Baker, Social Value Coordinator at Talks Stage sponsors Bristol City Leap, about social value, retrofitting and just transition.

Rachael, you’re an expert in social value – can you explain what that is, and why it’s important?

Really simply, social value is about transforming people’s lives for the better. It’s about going into a space or a community and, rather than doing something to that community, actually getting them involved by creating opportunities for them locally.

So for example, at Bristol City Leap, rather than just retrofitting people’s houses, we’re also talking to them about why it’s important, we’re creating local jobs, we’re going into schools and working with our supply chains, all to create that social value.

How is Bristol City Leap aiming to create social value?

Bristol City Leap is a £1 billion initiative to deliver low-carbon energy infrastructure, support community projects in Bristol, create jobs and help the city hit carbon neutrality by 2030.

We want to make sure that the city-wide infrastructure projects that we’re delivering will have a positive impact on people’s lives and transform them for the better. We’ve made a commitment to deliver over £61.5 million of social value over the next five years of the project.

Over that time, we’re aiming to create 1,000 jobs, with over 400 of those being within the BS1 to BS16 postcodes. We’re going to be creating training opportunities including apprenticeships, and also going into schools to inspire the next generation of green leaders. Because Bristol City Leap is a 20-year joint venture project – at least – so we need to make sure that the people going through school and college now are all going to be enthusiastic and excited about the green economy that we’re transitioning into.

You mentioned delivering £61.5 million of social value – how do you measure that?

Social value is quite complicated to measure. We use something called the Social Value Portal where each individual measure – whether it’s job creation, money spent within the local supply chain, time spent going into local schools, or whatever it is – is translated into a monetary value based on some proxies and local data. That can then be used to tally up all the different measures into one monetary figure. 

Can you tell us about some of the projects Bristol City Leap is working on?

At the moment we’re working on a lot of social housing projects, improving their energy efficiency through retrofitting, installing heat pumps and so on. We’re making sure that the people who need support the most aren’t left behind and that they have warm comfortable homes to live in, and hopefully reducing their energy bills too.

And there are side benefits as well. We have one case study on our website with a resident talking about how the work we’ve done insulating his home has had a noise-dampening effect so that he can’t hear the neighbours, and he’s not having to deal with damp and mould anymore either.

What is ‘just transition’ and how does it link with what you’re doing?

The just transition is about making sure that the transition to a green economy is fair and accessible for everyone. In Bristol, we have a Just Transition Declaration, which sets out 10 principles that essentially boil down to the fact that in order to transition to a thriving green economy, we need to make sure that we bring everyone along on the journey with us. We can’t leave anyone out. 

That’s why, for example, in our work experience programme, which we run through the Bristol Future Talent Partnership, we’re focusing on global majority students because we recognise that they are some of the groups that might be left behind within a transition to a green economy. Also with some of the work we’re doing in schools, we’re focusing on SEND groups to ensure that they feel like they have a space within the green economy as well.

We are working with lots of different groups across the city to ensure that no one’s left behind and we want to be as inclusive as possible with our approach to a just transition to the green economy.

How can other organisations and businesses in Bristol go about creating more social value?

When we’re looking at creating social value, it’s really important that we don’t always try to reinvent the wheel. I do a lot of networking in my job, going to events where people are working on social value or CSR initiatives, so we can all talk to each other, introduce contacts, share ideas and make sure we’re not all trying to do it separately. 

At Bristol City Leap we reach out to a lot of organisations to help us deliver on our social value commitment. For example, we’ve been working with Ablaze doing a program to support primary school students with their reading, and we’ve also been delivering some career mentoring sessions with them as well. We can’t be experts in everything so it’s good to be able to work with other partners.

The Future Leap events are a good place to start because they provide such a great networking opportunity. Go and try and meet as many people within the sector that you’re working in. You never know where the next opportunity is going to come from so talk to as many people as you can.

The Bristol City Leap team will be leading a panel discussion on Social Value at the Festival of Sustainable Business Exhibition on Thursday 19 September 2024 at We The Curious, Bristol. Book your free tickets here today.

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