Building Design’s intention to get behind social value comes at a really important time. The advent of social value (in other words wellbeing) is a really important opportunity to get people-centred design (and architects) back into the heart of the construction agenda.

Since the advent of the Social Value Act 2012 in England and the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, social value has been gaining traction as a requirement of procurement, contracts and planning in the public sector (UKGBC, 2019).

Yet there is as yet very little agreement on how it should be measured. A recent consultation by the UK government on the percentage that should be attributed to social value in procurement suggested 10%. Yet it seems that bodies such as Greater Manchester are already attributing a weighting of 30% in their decision-making on bids. The rise of social value in the evaluation of projects, decisions relating to land value and the delivery of section 106 agreements seems inevitable.

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