Baselining social value for local authorities: An evidence-based approach

There are three things we need to create better places and care for them in the long term: data, data, data. 

But what sort of data? How should we gather it? And how do we make practical use of the data that we do accumulate?  

With these questions in mind, and our own case-study to unpack, we embarked on our first Associates workshop of the year with Melissa Lacide, Senior Engagement Officer with the Quality of Life Foundation, and Andy Porter, Head of Innovation & Digital Services at Stantec.

The case study in question was a project to provide a baseline for social value for Harlow and Gilston Garden Town. Born out of academic research, it was funded by the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Proptech 2 fund. 

For what sort of data we should be gathering, for the Harlow & Gilston Garden Town project, we decided on both ‘active’ data (information that is provided by individuals and groups in surveys or through engagement) and ‘passive’ data (gathered without ‘active’ participation, such as socio-economic data available through ONS).

As to the how we gathered, we worked with the community engagement platform Commonplace and local voluntary services organisation, Rainbow Services, on a digital and face-to-face community engagement project, and on the passive data with Stantec, who were trying out their own Better Places Toolkit, which aggregates different data sets. By gathering both active and passive data through desk research and digital and in-person engagement across the Garden Town, we were able to get a clear picture of what people currently value, need and dislike, so that we could establish a quality of life baseline for the local area. 

And the practical use is already under way, with the creation of a quality monitoring framework to measure social impact over time; with the project informing local strategic plans; and exciting new initiatives underway through the setting up of a permanent community space, or urban room, as a result of the work we have done.

So where to go from here? The Quality of Life Associates, our network of industry professionals, had several points to raise.

How robust is our data?

We looked at the active engagement process of hiring local researchers, using pop-ups, online and paper surveys, workshops, maps and more to ensure maximum reach in the community, and making the effort to include voices who are often less-heard. We spoke about the GIS software and visualisation of socio-economic data cross-referenced against our evidence-based Framework. 

That said, how do we measure the meaningfulness of engagement? Is it the number of responses (triple what the local authority regularly has)? The spread of people? The number of in-depth conversations?

Where does the data take us?

We should look for correlations that the data might show and think about how to prove the cause and effect of what we have collected. Once we have the baseline of data, we need to replicate it, preferable across several years, as is planned with the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town project.

What are the next steps?

We need to store this data in a way that is both secure but also accessible to local communities; the people whose voices we have captured. The latter is essential to continue closing the feedback loop. 

With the definitions of social value and social impact often overlapping, or even reversed across the industry internationally, measuring this evidence-based approach will be an ongoing discussion.

Many thanks to Melissa and Andy for their time and efforts, and wisdom.
If you are interested in becoming an Associate, please find the relevant information and contact form here, and you can find more about our Quality of Life Mapping service here.