By Jake Tullet (Head of Social Value, Taylor Woodrow)
Walking through UKREiiF 2026, it was clear that social value has moved firmly from the margins to the mainstream of the built environment conversation. Across panels, fringe events, and informal discussions, the language has evolved.
But beneath that progress sits a more challenging reality: while the sector is aligned in ambition, it remains fragmented in approach. This is a problem of proportionality: the same expectations are being applied regardless of organisational scale, project context, or influence.
There is energy and intent, but not yet the consistency, capability, or shared understanding needed to turn that momentum into meaningful, place-based impact at scale.
As social value has grown, so too has the friction within the system. This is an inflection point for the built environment sector. The next phase won’t be about scaling what we’ve built, but about correcting it – to ensure that the built environment projects of today, truly improve the outcomes for the country for generations to come.
Buyer / Supplier Disparity
Having worked on both sides of the dynamic, there is a growing imbalance emerging between those commissioning social value and those delivering it — not to mention those benefitting from it, but this blog won’t be tackling that important discussion, today.
In so many cases, Tier 1 contractors and their teams have developed sophisticated approaches, data systems, and delivery models to ensure their work creates a positive impact. Meanwhile, parts of the client and commissioning landscape are still catching up, stifling innovation in the supply chain.
Local authorities are often ahead of central bodies, as they operate closer to their immediate communities and provide the services needed to create social impact. However, in many areas, investment in buyer capability hasn’t kept pace with the ambition set out in policy, or the confidence often expressed online. If recent policy and legislative progress is to evolve into genuine social value, the commissioning side must involve the supply chain earlier to co-design ways of working that better supports social value creation.
Compliance has scaled social value — but it’s also constraining it
To be fair, the shift towards a compliance-led model has achieved something important. It has pushed social value into the mainstream. Commercial teams now take it seriously, and it carries real weight in procurement. But social value was never designed to sit comfortably within a compliance framework.
At its core, it is about social change, local need, and human outcomes — things that do not always translate cleanly into scoring matrices, award criteria or standardised responses.
One of the clearest tensions in this model is its impact on SMEs. Local businesses are often the engines of genuine social and economic value: employing local people, reinvesting in local economies, and contributing to place in ways that are difficult to quantify. Yet they are frequently required to compete on the same rigid metrics as larger organisations — including initiatives that may sit far outside their scale or influence.
The future is not about abandoning compliance, but about rebalancing it. We need to introduce more trust, flexibility, and a genuine focus on outcomes.
The direction of travel is clear. Social value is no longer a niche conversation; it is a core expectation of the built environment. But if the next phase is to really deliver, the sector must shift from alignment in ambition to alignment in execution.
That means investing in capability on the commissioning side, proportionate to the supply chain; designing systems that enable rather than constrain; and ensuring tools and frameworks are proportionate to the contract, enabling engagement from all corners of the industry and creating genuine social value for all those involved in, or affected by, the built environment. Which is of course, everyone.