Is embedding social value in planning key to delivering equitable places?

Is embedding social value into the planning process the key to making sure the real estate sector is delivering equitable places for all? This was the big topic of debate as EG, with partner Shoosmiths, gathered a host of experts at the London Real Estate Forum last month. And for one of those experts, Pooja Agrawal, that is exactly what the planning process was designed to do. The chief executive of Public Practice, a not-for-profit that helps the public sector build and develop its placemaking leadership abilities, said: “Planning was born in the Victorian times after rapid industrialisation and lots of poor housing and really poor health. “It was the Victorians who said: hold on, we need to have a vision and think about how places are designed, created, managed and balanced in terms of those different needs. So, for me, that means that planning is integral to defining and conveying the framework for how we are holding social value.” The panel Pooja Agrawal, chief executive, Public Practice Rokhsana Fiaz OBE, mayor, London Borough of Newham Kirsten Hewson, head of real estate division, Shoosmiths Thomasin Renshaw, chief development officer, Pocket Living Cath Shaw, deputy chief executive, Barnet Council Lucy Wood, UK climate solutions leader, Stantec Planning does have the ability, therefore, to deliver social value if operated in the right way. The problem may well be that no one really knows what social value is, or that what is social value to one person, one developer, one council, may be something completely different to another. “The title can be quite misleading,” said Stantec’s UK climate solutions leader Lucy Wood. “Because by social we really mean all the additional benefits that development can bring in terms of the economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability. We can’t have good health and wellbeing without a healthy environment, without secure income. So, in my head, it is another word for that holistic view of sustainability.” Balancing needs “I personally think the planning system can capture and identify social value, and I think most planning applications would highlight the public benefits that they bring, and that’s fundamentally social value, a public benefit,” said Pocket Living chief development officer Thomasin Renshaw. “But the difficulty lies in that some social value or public benefits can differ depending on the observer. So you can have somebody who is struggling to rent an apartment, can’t afford local prices and wants to stay local. For them, a public benefit is an affordable apartment, versus somebody who, for them, a public benefit is not seeing a tall building at the end of their street.” She added: “There is a tension in terms of how needs or desires differ in relation to what impacts their quality of life. And that’s the difficulty that planning has. It has to balance all of that.” Shoosmiths’ head of real estate division, Kirsten Hewson, agreed that it can be a tricky balancing act. “In terms of what can you actually deliver, there is no formal definition anywhere, so we have to be very careful that we don’t layer on another policy on top of the general approach to environmental and sustainable development. We have to be careful that social value doesn’t become a box-ticking exercise. It has to be something that is embedded in the design from the start. “It’s not the planning system that is going to solve all of these things. The planning system has a part to play in it, but the whole development industry ought to be working together to deliver,” added Hewson. “The importance of creating good homes and places people are proud to live in and social cohesion is really important. And it’s not just about saying the planning system imposes this on me. We should be looking at it from the start. There is benefit to everyone if we do these things well.” Cath Shaw, deputy chief executive of Barnet Council, said: “I think we’ve made good strides in defining the E bit of ESG. “I think we all know what we need to do. The how is hard, but we know the what. But I do think we need to make more progress on the S part, the social part. That’s not to say there isn’t lots of inherent social value in much of what goes through the planning system. “If you’re building homes for Londoners to live in, that has a real social value. But we do need to get more thoughtful about how we do it so that it can really benefit our communities.” “A matter of life and death” Pocket Living’s Renshaw, reckons developers are being thoughtful but that the sector’s efforts are not always noticed. “I think that it’s not communicated very well how much social value is brought about by development,” she said. “People do talk about development, and often quite negatively as if all developers are evil and development is always impactful on people in a negative way. But we don’t talk about the benefits and the amount of money that is paid by developers to bring about all sorts of different elements of social value.” For the mayor of the London Borough of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, getting social value right is a necessity. She refused to mince her words, telling the audience this is a matter of life and death, that all of us will be gone if we don’t sort ourselves out. “We live in a world where humanity faces the greatest existential threat,” she said. “We are going to die, every single species will be impacted, including the human species… We are trying to meet our climate emergency response targets but we are being constrained and held back by the national planning policy framework that talks to social value of the environment precisely because there is no clarity of definition.” But perhaps that definition does lie in that original concept the UK planning system was built on. Those Victorian principles to create better places, better homes for people to live in, places to thrive, to be healthy, happy and safe in. And if that isn’t real estate delivering social value, then what is? To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews In partnership with Image © Bar Productions