Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Real estate social impact measurement is usually broken into design, planning, construction and in-use phases. Along that journey, it is passed between owners, contractors, architects, occupiers and local authorities, each with their own targets, language and time horizons.
At UKREiiF 2026, a panel chaired by Thrive’s Cléo Folkes asked whether the sector can do better.
The consensus was that progress has been made, but the real estate social impact agenda still falls short of what a joined-up, place-based, outcome-led approach could deliver.
This blog summarises the discussion and pulls out what it means for asset owners, developers, investors and sustainability leads who want their social value to last.
The session, Delivering Joined-Up Impact Across the Asset Lifecycle, brought together:
- Nicola Mathers (Chief Executive, Future of London)
- Chithra Marsh (Director, Buttress Architects)
- Chris Law (Regional Director, AECOM, and chair of the CCS Social Value Working Group)
- Jamie Quinn (Sustainability Director, Related Argent).
Here is our breakdown of the big talking points.
The sector is still working in silos
Chair Cléo Folkes opened by calling out the “silo problem” directly. After more than three decades in real estate, she explained that she has seen how teams within a single company can run on completely different goals and even different jargon – to say nothing of the gaps between organisations across a 20-year evolutionary process.
Chithra Marsh agreed, noting that this silo problem goes beyond individual organisations. There is also a lack of coordination between the professional bodies.
RIBA, RTPI, RICS, central and local government all want broadly the same thing, but they don’t talk to each other often enough, she warned.
Cléo acknowledged that attempts to engage them collectively had not gone far. Inside development projects the problem is sharper, she continued. A scheme passes through different teams at different stages. People rotate, practices hand over, local authority staff move on, and there is no single party carrying the original social impact intent from RIBA Stage 1 through to operational management. The result of this absence of continuity is that commitments made at planning quietly fall away by handover.
Legacy is the starting point, not the wrap-up
Nicola Mathers opened by outlining five principles from Future of London’s work on social impact legacy:
- Adopt a legacy mindset by building on what already works in a place
- Carry the baton so the handover between organisations doesn’t lose the original intent
- Aim for transformative change
- Be people-centred, recognising that wellbeing covers health, employment, security, confidence and home
- Value the process over the many decades it is being developed and is in operation
Most of the sector still treats social impact as a planning or compliance deliverable, she warned. The panel argued for the opposite. Legacy is the starting point.
Place and community shape what good looks like
However, there is no universally applicable template for real estate social impact and Jamie Quinn made the point plainly: what good looks like in one community will not translate to another.
At Brent Cross Town, Related Argent has worked with the University of Manchester and Buro Happold on the “Flourishing Index”, a longitudinal study tracking individual and collective wellbeing in surrounding communities from baseline through the development and beyond.
The discipline of measuring the same place over time and listening to what changes is key, he explained.
Chithra in turn described Buttress’s work in Maryport, where a £200,000 contract enabled a police presence that helped cut crime by around 42%, and a £3 million project brought a redundant building back into use as a live music venue.
None of these initiatives would win an architecture prize, and yet the impact was undeniable. Plus, all of it came from consulting the community throughout, she said.
Social impact should be designed in, not bolted on
While many social impact conversations stop at volunteering, skills and community funds, impact in real estate also comes through design: the walkability of the public realm, green space, air quality and light inside buildings, permeable ground floors that invite people in rather than glass walls that keep them out, and the food and beverage mix that determines whether people want to linger.
Jamie Quinn argued that these factors shape whether a place generates wellbeing for decades, and they feed directly into commercial value. Great places attract people who want to live and work there, which translates into stronger rental yields and sale prices. That commercial link is the argument an ESG or sustainability lead can take to a sceptical board or investor relations colleague: social impact done well is not a cost line, it is a driver of asset performance and long-run returns.
Procurement: blocker or multiplier
Chris Law was clear that procurement can be all three: blocker, innovator, multiplier. When it is compliance-led, cost-driven and transactional, it weakens social impact before delivery starts, he warned.
But when it is treated as a strategic system for place-based outcomes, it does the opposite, Chris went on.
It signals priorities to the supply chain, opens frameworks to SMEs and VCSEs, and creates long-term apprenticeship pipelines rather than project-by-project commitments.
Jamie added that being explicit about social impact expectations contractually, in the brief to architects, engineers and principal contractors, matters far more than relying on enthusiastic individuals on the ground.
Conclusion: Real estate measurement needs to grow up
The panel was direct about the state of measurement: some of the headline social value numbers in circulation are no longer credible, and the sector knows it.
The direction of travel is clearer baselines, more rigorous quantification, and authentic qualitative evidence alongside the figures.
The harder challenge raised by Chris Law is the shift from monitoring activities to capturing outcomes. Did the actions result in sustained local employment? Did they support productivity, social mobility, wellbeing over time? That is where real estate social impact needs to head.
How Thrive supports joined-up real estate social impact
Many of the problems the panel described are the ones Thrive’s real estate platform is built to solve.
The continuity gap, the absence of a single source of truth as teams and organisations change over a 15 or 20-year development, is precisely what Thrive’s real estate solution is designed to address. The platform holds commitments, evidence, stories and outcomes in one place across design, planning, construction and in-use phases. When the next practice picks up the baton, the original intent and the running record are there for them.
The measurement maturity challenge sits squarely inside the Impact Evaluation Standard, the Thrive platform’s in-built social impact framework, which is independently governed, aligned with HM Treasury Green Book principles, and built on publicly accessible data from official sources, such as the ONS.
The Thrive Social Scorecard gives real estate teams credible quantification at asset and portfolio level, with international proxies covering 38 OECD countries for cross-border portfolios. Activity-level data from a single building feeds directly into asset, fund and portfolio reporting, so a sustainability director can answer a board question about one specific intervention or a portfolio-wide outcome from the same source. When an investor asks for the social value generated by a particular asset last quarter, the figure is available immediately from the Scorecard rather than requiring a bespoke analysis.
The multi-stakeholder data problem, the reality that meaningful impact data sits with occupiers, contractors, community partners and supply chain, is addressed through Thrive’s email-based contributor capture. Contributors respond without needing a login, which lifts response rates and lowers friction for the supply chain. Real estate social impact teams are typically small relative to the breadth of stakeholders they need to engage; the platform is built so a two- or three-person sustainability team can coordinate data from dozens of supply chain partners, occupiers and community organisations without chasing individual logins or running parallel spreadsheets.
For a deeper conversation about how this works in practice across an asset lifecycle, the team is happy to talk through it.
Thrive covers panel debates, regulatory developments and emerging best practice in real estate social impact on an ongoing basis, including changes flowing from PPN 026 and Green Book updates as they affect the sector. Subscribers receive the analysis as it lands.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is the practice of carrying social impact intent, commitments, evidence and learning continuously through every stage of a real estate asset’s life, from design and planning through construction and into operation. It is the opposite of much practice to date, which reveals fragmented activity tracking, with each stage and party running on its own goals.
Real estate developments often run for 15 to 20 years or longer. Teams rotate, ownership changes, practices hand over. Different professional bodies and disciplines speak different languages. Unlike a single contract, there is rarely one party accountable from start to finish, which makes continuity the central challenge.
Design decisions about public realm, walkability, green space, air quality, lighting, permeable building edges and the food and beverage mix all shape whether a place supports wellbeing. These choices are often more impactful over time than volunteering or community fund activities, which is why the panel argued they should be considered part of the social impact brief.
Procurement can block social impact when it is compliance-led and cost-driven, or it can multiply impact when used strategically. Strategic procurement signals priorities to the supply chain, opens frameworks to SMEs and VCSEs, and creates long-term apprenticeship pipelines rather than one-off project commitments.
Through a combination of rigorous baselines, frameworks aligned with HM Treasury Green Book methodology, transparent proxy values, and authentic qualitative evidence. The direction of travel is towards outcome-based measurement: sustained employment, wellbeing, productivity and social mobility over time, rather than counting activities.
Thrive provides a single platform that captures commitments, evidence and outcomes across design, planning, construction and in-use phases. The Impact Evaluation Standard delivers credible, independently governed quantification, and the Social Scorecard gives real estate teams asset and portfolio-level views. Email-based contributor capture makes it practical to bring in data from across the supply chain and occupier base.
Alan Boyce
Senior Researcher More articles by Alan >
