The social value of infrastructure: Two case studies from the UK

Tideway: Localism and legacy

The Thames Tideway Tunnel is a 25km super sewer. It is designed to protect the River Thames from the millions of tonnes of sewage that currently spill into its tidal section every year. Tideway is the company that has been set up to finance and build the tunnel. 

As part of the delivery of the tunnel, Tideway has a vision to reconnect London with the River Thames. A comprehensive legacy programme has been developed, which sets out the benefits the company intends to deliver to London during construction and for years to come.

The primary purpose of the project is to reduce sewage overflows into the River Thames, delivering the core benefit of improved water quality. Beyond that, Tideway’s vision is to reconnect Londoners with the River Thames and deliver wider benefits to London, both during and after construction.   

Tideway commissioned an independent Social Return on Investment (SROI) assessment on its legacy programme. In 2018, the SROI forecast a return of £3.39 for every pound spent on delivering the legacy programme. 

A legacy strategy is in place that contains 54 commitments across five themes: environment; health, safety & wellbeing; economy; people; and place.  Tideway has developed a Sustainable Financing Framework, linking performance against legacy commitments to the cost of financing.

In addition, the company has mapped legacy commitments to targets within the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Legacy commitments have also been embedded into procurement processes and contracts.

Performance against the legacy commitments is reviewed quarterly with Senior Executives and key stakeholders. Tideway’s 2018/19 annual report indicates that 90% of live Legacy Commitments are on track to be achieved against a target of 75%. 

Examples of social value initiatives are manifold.

The company has set a target for 90% of tunnel spoil (about 4.2 million tonnes) to be transported by river rather than road. In doing so, they will take lorry movements off London’s roads, limiting pollution and congestion, and protecting road-users. To date, more than 2 million tonnes of spoil have been moved by river, avoiding 200,000 two-way Heavy Goods Vehicle movements. 

Having been one of the first organisations to sign up to BRE’s Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard, Tideway has recertified to the ELS for the second year. It remains the only client signatory.

By focusing on local employment, the company has employed people with criminal convictions, provided apprenticeships and offered comprehensive work placements. An independent Social Value analysis of their commitment to employing ex-offenders found that every £1 invested has generated £6.86 in social returns. 

The Active Row partnership, with youth engagement charity London Youth Rowing, aims to get 8,000 young people active through indoor and on-water rowing within four years. 50% of them will be female and 60% from minority backgrounds. The programme has so far engaged 5,600 young people in just over two years. 

Since 2016, Tideway volunteers have collected 96,427 plastic bottles from the Thames. Volunteer surveys have found that 95% developed greater awareness of impact of human behaviours on the River Thames. 75% committed to reducing their use of plastic.

The company was also included in The Times Top 50 Employers for Women in 2018 and is committed to achieving gender parity.

Wisbech: A holistic approach to community needs

Wisbech is a town (population c. 34,000) in the heart of Anglian Water’s operating area. It is in the bottom 10% nationally for four of the top eight deprivation indicators. 

In 2012, the @one Alliance (a collaborative organisation of consultants and contractors delivering over half of Anglian Water’s capital investment programme) made a commitment to create sustained, positive change in Wisbech.

Since then, the @one Alliance has worked to tackle these social issues and help regenerate the community. Work has gone way beyond simply maintaining and improving water infrastructure in the area.

Wisbech was experiencing sustained underinvestment, increased levels of deprivation, low-skill and low-paid employment and challenging educational needs.

The statistics paint a stark picture. Life expectancy in the town is three years lower than in nearby Cambridge. It is ranked the UK’s 6th worst town on the social mobility index. 35% of local people leave school without any qualifications. It is also the largest town in England not connected to the rail network.

Anglian Water & partners focused their efforts on addressing these local needs, immersed themselves in the local community and built trusting relationships. They have produced the following guidance for others:

“Immerse yourself into the local community, ask questions and most importantly listen. Through this, you’ll create strong, trusting relationships where all parties are treated equally.

“Understand the current situation and challenges. Hearing this from local people will help you really understand what is going on and create emotional investment from key stakeholders.

“Be honest from the beginning about what you can offer as an organisation and what you can’t. This will help you to gain the respect of the local community and local stakeholders.”

Key to the success has been the @one Alliance model, which was established to deliver a shared set of outcomes. The outcomes include caring for communities, a smaller carbon footprint, and delivering resilient services. The outcomes are fully integrated into the business plan and scorecard, which is reviewed on a monthly basis. 

Anglian Water’s @one Alliance procurement model demonstrated that better performance and wider value is achieved by procuring based on outcomes not outputs. Their standard procurement weighting is 80% capability/quality and 20% cost.

In Wisbech, the @oneAlliance recognised that, as a group of organisations, they could make a big impact based on local needs assessment. They have achieved a fantastic range of outcomes, focused on three key areas: community support, education and skills, and infrastructure development. In the words of one local: “People are starting to hope, to believe, that things can be better. Not just for one person or even ten, but for the whole town.”^[1]

References

1. New Models for Collaborative Working: A guide to community regeneration in Wisbech; Anglian Water