The Earls Court Development Company (ECDC) are responsible for driving the regeneration of the, circa 40 acres, former Earls Court Exhibition Centre site. In 2021, ECDC appointed RealWorth to measure the social value of the activities associated with the regeneration process and has since been retained as the Development Partnership’s Social Value Advisor to help define and implement its social value strategy.
This long-term appointment seeks to integrate social value into a wide range of functions conducted by ECDC during the planning, design, construction, and occupation phases of the development.
Work to date includes:
- Annual Impact Reporting: RealWorth monitors and evaluates the range of community and meanwhile activities that have taken place within and around the site, and further into the two Boroughs. The RealWorth team continues to conduct impact analysis of ECDC’s various Meanwhile and Community programmes, including a Community Fund, the on-site BBC Earth Experience and ECDC’s Community Hub activities, calculating that a total of £7.9million in social value was generated from November 2022 to November 2023.
- Social Value Charter: RealWorth authored a Social Value Charter (as part of a wider Sustainability Charter) that includes a definition of social value, objectives, and measurable KPIs for issues such as engagement, design, and operation of the development. The KPIs will be used to track performance against the objectives throughout the development process.
- Masterplan Impact: RealWorth has collaborated with designers and planners to understand the social value of the new development of the site. This process has included a series of workshops between RealWorth and the design team to discuss the potential benefits to local stakeholders, and how these can be maximised.
- Sentiment Surveying: RealWorth conducts sentiment surveying on the local community, to better understand the feeling of the community towards the site and organisation.
The work that RealWorth is doing is used by ECDC to underpin the design and development of the project, working towards a completed development that has embedded social value at every stage.
