Case study: Creating greener communities through on the ground consultation

How has your focus on ESG and social value changed over time? 

My personal interest in social value comes from my community investment background and my passion for asset-based community development. As an organisation, our approach to social value has evolved in recent years. We are on a journey with our social value strategy: in the early days, our approach was dictated very much about what the organisation thought was the right thing to do for the communities we serve. Now we are much more active in asking the community what it is they want social value to deliver for them.

What are your social value goals?

A big goal for us is community regeneration. There is a lot that we plan to achieve through our social value strategy either on our own or by working with partners. Regeneration will involve building on Gloucester City Council land, so partnership working is critical. If you look at the deprivation statistics for an area like Podsmead, it is a natural fit for regeneration and all the opportunities that could provide. Our projects there involve working with public health bodies to address housing deprivation alongside health inequality.

We think about regeneration in a variety of ways. Clearly building new housing or retrofitting accommodation is an important part of regeneration, but it is not the only outcome we are looking to deliver. For example, our building projects will provide apprenticeship and employment opportunities for people leaving the education system or struggling to find work. We are also working with the community to enhance/create a better retail and amenity offer, which in turn provides access to affordable food, enhances community wellbeing, and provides further job opportunities for residents.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped your organisation’s thinking on social value?

The pandemic has underlined the importance of investing in communities to build the necessary capacity and resilience to withstand future crises. Our work brings us into close partnership with many community groups, and our investment to support these groups prior to the pandemic was critical to ensure that they remained resilient and that our social value outcomes were not significantly diminished by COVID-19.

What steps do you take to engage the community on your social value goals?

We have been actively working with the community over the last couple of years to gather their input into a series of neighbourhood priorities and community investment plans. We have done this through community roadshows, focus groups, and online surveys, and by asking for direct feedback on our draft plans.

This has been an iterative process. We found it was helpful to provide initial ideas for the community to react to, rather than starting with a blank page. Through this process of dialogue and engagement, we have ended up with plans that are quite different than when we started. However, it has allowed us to report back each year through our annual report on what we have achieved in order to celebrate social value successes and demonstrate we are listening to the concerns of communities.

What did you learn through the process of community engagement?

Residents have been very engaged with the environmental aspects of our proposals. Building in features like grass rooves and living walls as well as improving biodiversity was something that the community felt very strongly about. In our various consultations, one thing that surprised me was an appetite for electric vehicle charging stations, even though there are lower levels of car ownership in the communities that we serve.

It is important, therefore, that we maximise the green spaces and environmental credentials of all our developments. Communities want to know that any investment from us will drive benefits for environmental goals and social and wellbeing outcomes both now and in the long term.

In our Podsmead development, for example, we supported the community to set up a wild garden and an allotment in partnership with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. That collaboration created a series of green pathways that join up various parts of the development and acts as a natural habitat for at-risk species of plants and animals.

What advice would you give an organisation that wants to enhance its social value and ESG outcomes?

You need to approach things with an open mind. Don’t believe that your organisation always knows what is best for the community. You have to see this as a dialogue. It’s also important to be transparent with the community that difficult choices may have to be made at various points along the way. With limited resources, you need to prioritise investments. That may mean you can do some of the things they want straightaway while other ideas will come later as more funding comes available.  

Author bio

Anita Pope, Gloucester City Homes

Anita Pope is Director of Housing and Communities at Gloucester City Homes. Gloucester City Homes is an independent housing association that was spun out of Gloucester City Council in 2005, and since then has been responsible for managing a portfolio of over 4,400 rented homes in the Gloucester area.