GMHP’s social value commitment wins national recognition

Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP) has been recognised with a National Social Value Award for the partnership’s commitment to enhancing the social value of the areas it works in.

GMHP, a collaboration of 26 housing providers across Greater Manchester, won the award for establishing a partnership approach to delivering social value in the region. This award application reflects the GM partnership as an innovative channel for place-based social value through place over three years.

The prestigious national awards aim to showcase best practice from around the UK, demonstrating how organisations from all sectors are embedding social value into the way they do business.

Since GMHP were formed in 2012, social value has been a priority of the partnership, with members publicly pledging to put social value at the heart of their organisation through a range of commitments. These have included jointly embedding social value into procurement, developing a bespoke measurement framework to demonstrate social value, and supporting Social Enterprises and the Real Living Wage campaign across Greater Manchester.

In the last year alone, GMHP members have supported 6,500 residents towards work, awarded £2.2 million of grants for community-run projects, housed close to 2,000 people who were previously homeless and built more than 1,200 new homes.

The award comes at the perfect time as January 2020 saw the first GMHP Social Value conference, with hundreds of like-minded organisations coming together to share best practice, learn from successes and collaborate on projects.

Lee Sugden chief executive of GMHP member Salix Homes and chair of the partnership’s Social Value Group said:

“Social value underpins what we are about. Collectively our members contribute £1.2billion a year to the GM economy and we want to make sure each and every pound of that works hard to get as much value as possible for our customers and communities, from supporting local social enterprises to embedding social value in our procurement.

“To be recognised with a national award which looks beyond the housing sector shows just how far we’ve come, and we believe the model we have created in Greater Manchester can be a blue print for others to follow.”

The award was presented at the National Social Value conference by the National Social Value Taskforce (NSVTF) a subgroup of the LGAs National Advisory Group for procurement, and was received by Leigh McLaughlin, Social Value & Bid Advisor at One Manchester and Stephanie Cameron, Social Value Specialist at Great Places