Our priority for communities is to invest more, drive change and build social cohesion so thecustomers and communities we support can thrive.
Through our Community Strategy 2020-25 we will:
- Target in excess of £3 million per year of dedicated resources to communities that featurein the top 20% most deprived areas of the IMD, the nation’s official measure of relativedeprivation for neighbourhoods in England and in areas where our partnership with Experian and our own ‘Voice of the Customer’ analysis demonstrates that our investment isneeded.
- Target 2,000 people into sustainable employment over the duration of the strategy bycreating new pathways into training and employment opportunities.
- Aspire to deliver a social value ratio of £1: £12.50 for health and wellbeing programmesacross our investment zones.
- Aim to be the ‘partner of choice’ therefore over the lifetime of the strategy we aim toleverage £1.2 million in additional funding and in-kind support through our partnershipwork with stakeholders.
- Recognise that there is significant opportunity to create social value through ourprocurement. We will introduce a social value commitment as part of our procurement framework and work closely with our suppliers to implement this within our CommunityInvestment Zones. We will target £2.5 million of social value created via our supply chain,over a five-year lifespan.
We recognise that measuring the impact of our work is important, not only to demonstrate the value and impact that we are creating in the local community but also the return on investment. We want our colleagues to be able to use our social value data to help inform the decisions we make across our organisation. We will introduce a set of indicators and developour reporting capabilities both internally and externally to provide the information ourcustomers, stakeholders and colleagues require. We will continue to work with the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust (HACT), our peers, partners, and suppliers to share best practice and evolve social value measurement and social policies for our sector.
We aspire to deliver a social value ratio of £1: £12.50 for health and wellbeing across our 11key areas. This year, we achieved £1: £5.74. We have a way to go, but we’re ambitious andknow we can get there.