Big Society Capital have joined forces with social advisory firm The Good Economy to ensure private capital is a positive force in tackling the need for more social and affordable housing. Together with investment fund managers and other sector stakeholders, we are releasing two publications that aim to establish norms of practice that can help shape an inclusive housing market.
We believe that private capital can play a significant positive role in meeting the UK’s housing challenges, but that it needs to be stewarded responsibly.
Working with housing investment managers we have co-developed an approach to describing and reporting social impact in social and affordable housing to facilitate greater transparency and accountability in the sector. The fund managers we’ve worked with will now be adopting and testing this framework over the next 12 months and reporting against it as part of their annual impact reporting.
We are also launching a supporting “Insight Brief” which proposes a descriptive framework for navigating the range of investment models in the sector, encouraging an open debate to help facilitate a culture of trust and values alignment across market actors.
Establishing new norms takes time. These two reports aim is to lay the foundations for an affordable housing investment landscape that acts responsibly and in line with sector interests. We now invite others to join in this effort, either as adopters or promotors of the impact reporting framework; or by sending us feedback and comments and engaging in the conversation about how to build and shape an effective market.
