Delivering social value through our supply chain
“By working collaboratively with our supply chain partners such as Wates, United Living and Equans we can do more for our residents, in line with the priorities of Clarion Futures.”
By Shelley Hathaway-Batt, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Projects at Clarion Futures
At Clarion – the UK’s largest housing association – we manage social homes in more than 170 local authorities and have a heritage stretching back more than a century.
We’re a business for social purpose and our charitable foundation, Clarion Futures, supports Clarion residents and communities through what is one of the country’s biggest social investment programmes.
We make every penny count and any surplus is reinvested in our mission to provide homes for those who need them most and make a difference for our residents and communities.
But we can’t do it alone. Given our size, we are in a unique position to leverage social value from our supply chain, working with partners to achieve greater economic, social and environmental benefits for the communities in which contracts are delivered.
We work hard to ensure that the goods and services we procure are high quality and deliver what is needed, but we also want to take every opportunity to maximise our ability to deliver our social purpose.
To achieve this, we choose to work with organisations that share our values and do not purely focus on the bottom line. We have embedded social value into our procurement practices and implemented a new policy ensuring consistency and a focus on our customers and communities.
For us, social value is not an added extra – it is an essential component of our procurement strategy that enables us to make a meaningful difference in our communities. By working collaboratively with our supply chain partners such as Wates, United Living and Equans, we can do more for our residents, in line with the priorities of Clarion Futures.
One of these priorities is supporting people into work, and in 2022/23 we were able to provide 195 apprenticeships, predominantly to Clarion residents or people living in Clarion communities. We also supported 1,300 people with training qualifications and delivered 203 job starts and 102 work experience opportunities. All through our supply chain.
On top of that, our amazing partners and contractors invested nearly £700,000 to improve our communities and support community projects. This has enabled a wonderful range of projects, including everything from refurbishing a much-loved adventure playground in Merton to funding social action projects that have empowered so many young people, including two students who opened a school uniform charity. Funding from our social value programme has also helped a food pantry to purchase and run a van to ensure they could get supplies to those most isolated in their community. And we’ve also received some generous social value funding from Travis Perkins to support our ongoing work to help residents through the cost of living crisis.
More than £55,000 has also been donated towards digital devices as part of a loan scheme that offers residents a lifeline by connecting them to jobs and training opportunities, as well as to family and friends. We’re currently working to expand this to provide business mentoring to community organisations.
Altogether in 2022/23 we generated a record £16m of social value* through our supply chain partners, harnessing our collective power to go above and beyond to support our work through Clarion Futures.
As we move to a more socially conscious world, where consumers are demanding more from businesses in terms of sustainability, transparency and ethical business practices, housing associations should take the lead, collaborating with organisations that not only provide high quality services but also care about the communities in which they work and want to contribute to making a difference.
*Social value is calculated using the HACT (Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust) Social Value Bank.This piece first appeared in Issue 13 of Housing Executive in March 2024.