The need for a pragmatic tool to demonstrate social value was felt to be urgent, particularly by those responsible for developing project bids who were regularly confronted with questions about it.

The Social Value Toolkit for Architecture (SVT), published just recently by the RIBA, is the result of a task and finish group conceived by the Research Practice Leads, an interdisciplinary group of built environment professionals who lead on research within architectural practice. One of the aims of the SVT is to prompt the inclusion of questions on the social value of design in bids.

The development of the SVT began with a small symposium at the offices of HTA Design in the summer of 2018 at which a series of invited speakers – Graham Randles (then at the New Economics Foundation), Jennifer Thomas (MHCLG), Kelly Watson (then at Arup) – presented the latest industry knowledge in this area. This group then joined the working group on the development of the tool.

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