Create thriving communities

Our aim is to drive change where it’s needed most and empower people to take the lead where they live. We know that our customers and communities know what’s best for them, so we've put together 13 investment plans that have been shaped by what they’ve told us they need. There were three common themes in all the conversations we shared with our customers: health and wellbeing, employment and community empowerment.

In the past 12 months we’ve supported 303 people into work, 689 onto training and 548 with CV checks and other employability support. And our self-employment programme, Create, won two national awards. Supporting people to turn their business ideas into reality during this challenging time has been a highlight of the past year.

The communities we work with are resilient and passionate about where they live and their neighbours. And in the past year we were able to secure around £650,000 of external funding, helping us to deliver the projects they needed. This has supported our Good Grub Club, which tackles food poverty and social isolation, employability sessions, our CREATE self-employment course, and all the great work we’ve done in schools. This also includes £95,000 to support local employers create employment opportunities for young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

This year, we’ve funded 89 community organisations. This has supported a range of projects, from supporting communities with food during the pandemic and equipment for students to use for online learning, to welcome boxes for asylum seekers and creating a cancer support unit.

Last year our total social value impact was £3,745,372. Social value impact is what we use to understand how the work we do impacts people’s lives. We use the HACT and Simetrica-Jacobs UK Social Value Bank to work out our social value. So, for every £1 we invest into a project, we use the figures to tell us what this equates to in monetary terms to improvements in people’s wellbeing.

As expected, the pandemic has had an impact on that. When lockdown started, we weren’t able to continue with the community and employment-based activities we’d planned. But we were in a strong place to adapt how we deliver them, focussing on partnership working, supporting local hubs to distribute supplies, food and more. We also leveraged additional funding to support activities and awarded community grants.

Working together with our customers and partners meant that communities had the support they needed during the pandemic (and continue to today). But because we had to temporarily pause or adapt services we weren’t able to measure social value in the usual way. Our community cafes usually generate a large part of social value, however during the lockdowns we had to close or change the way we operated them.

We aspire to deliver a social value ratio of £1: £12.50 for health and wellbeing across our 13 key neighbourhoods. This year, we achieved £1: £5.74. So, we have a way to go. But we remain ambitious and we’ll work hard to get there.