The shape of place: designing social value through data and dialogue

How often have you heard the term place-based social impact and wondered what on earth it actually means or where you would even begin? The truth is, that it is simpler than it sounds. It means thinking about the needs of a place and designing projects, funds or initiatives that respond to those needs.

The good news is that there is an established approach to completing a place or local needs analysis. Every credible method follows the same logic: start with local strategy, paint a picture with socio-economic data, research what is already happening in the community, and use the findings to identify relevant social-value themes and outcomes.

It takes time, curiosity and the humility to let evidence, not assumption, set your direction.

The new data landscape: ONS and local authority insights 

What has changed in the past year is the richness of the data available to guide us. The Office for National Statistics has fired the starting gun on a new era of open information. Its Explore Local Statistics platform, supported by the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, and a growing library of real-time indicators, mean  that we can see not only where need sits but how it changes over time.

For the built environment sector, this data should shape our insights. It allows us to move from broad ambition to precise design, to test whether our projects are really shifting the dial and to compare one ward or local authority with the next.

A local needs analysis is not a half-day desktop task. Pulling a few tables from the ONS to drop into a planning statement might give you a headline, but used this way it is a blunt instrument

A local needs analysis is not a half-day desktop task. Pulling a few tables from the ONS to drop into a planning statement might give you a headline, but used this way it is a blunt instrument. It will not reveal the story underneath.

Building a genuine picture of place means going slowly enough to see how patterns interact: how youth unemployment in one area links to transport accessibility, or how housing affordability shapes health outcomes. The data is your starting point; the interpretation is where the insight lies.

Building a local needs analysis

The first step is always the strategy and policy context. Every local authority has a plan which sets its priorities: growth corridors, green recovery, health equity, digital skills. Reading those documents before you open any datasets is essential. They show where public energy and investment are heading. Your social-value approach needs to travel in the same direction; otherwise it will sit awkwardly beside the local narrative, rather than reinforcing it.

Every local authority has a plan that sets its priorities: growth corridors, green recovery, health equity, digital skills. Reading those documents before you open any datasets is essential

Then comes the evidence. The ONS provides a national baseline with good data at local authority and ward level. Some local authorities have their own data, such as Birmingham’s Observatory and Sheffield’s Local Insights, which complement ONS with finer-grained information.

Take unemployment. The West Midlands headline rate may hover around 6%, but that average hides a stark contrast: Lozells or Handsworth face double the claimant count of Sutton Coldfield. Understanding that variation matters, because an equitable approach to social value should respond to place, not a postcode lottery.

The same applies to education data. In Ladywood, a higher proportion of adults have no formal qualifications, a clue that pre-employment training, rather than graduate recruitment, drives might make the difference.

What makes this even more powerful is the ability to compare change. If youth unemployment in one ward is falling faster than in another, the data prompts a practical question: what is working there that is not elsewhere? Social value design becomes a feedback loop, not a static report.

Alongside the numbers, the human picture is equally important. Researching existing community provision through local charities, faith groups and social enterprises ensures that your plan adds capacity rather than duplication.

A new housing development might discover a thriving local employability project. The smart move is not to create a rival scheme but to support and scale what is already trusted. That combination of data and dialogue is where genuine social impact starts.

From national trends to local realities: reading the data correctly

The difference between the national and local lens is best illustrated through example. At national level, the NHS New Hospital Programme could look at ONS data on rising youth unemployment and decide to embed a universal construction training and apprenticeship framework across all trusts as a coherent, evidence-based response to a national trend. Yet zoom in to an individual trust and the picture shifts.

Take wave one scheme Hillingdon, which would really benefit from a targeted apprenticeship programme. The local data shows that, for a scheme to succeed, it may require foundation training, as Hillingdon has a higher percentage of residents with no qualifications. Same data sets, different reading. That is why a place-based understand is important.

Then come the critical conversations, where numbers meet nuance. Sharing and discussing data with community stakeholders should not be a performance, but an invitation. Use the data to inform open questions such as “Tell me about the skills and training opportunities local people have” or “What could change that would help your community to access good and fair work?”.

These questions are not about testing the data but exploring how it plays out in real life. The aim is not to prove the data sets right or wrong, more to understand the everyday realities behind the numbers.

Crewe and the power of local insight

For example, Akerlof has a site in Crewe. The overall socio-economic picture for Cheshire East looks comparatively strong, but if you dig a little deeper you find wards with significant deprivation, intergenerational unemployment, higher numbers of children living in poverty and stark health inequalities.

During engagement, people spoke about losing hope, struggling to get by and not seeing a positive future for their children. Local children we spoke to could name sporting heroes, but could not see the opportunities on their doorstep to work in medicine, engineering or construction.

The programme we later designed focused on broadening horizons and raising aspirations among Year 5 and 6 pupils. It will target wards with the highest number of children living in poverty and be delivered by a local VCSE partner.

When you pair figures with people’s stories, you move from information to insight, and that is where genuine understanding of place begins. Social value at its best is the meeting point of evidenced need, lived experience, partnership and opportunity.

Pace-based social value at scale

Place-based analysis is not just useful to design social value plans for isolated construction projects. It can help local or combined authorities to knit together interventions that individually might not be viable but collectively unlock wider social and environmental impact: a town-centre regeneration, new active-travel infrastructure and affordable housing delivered as one coherent programme.

These are the kinds of evidence-based investments that attract impact funds, patient capital and the National Wealth Fund.

The 2025 data landscape allowed the construction and infrastructure sectors to potentially see impact in motion. We can track how youth unemployment, qualification levels or local business activity evolve over the life of our interventions, which is one of the benefits of long programmes. We can compare across wards, learn from outliers and adapt accordingly.

But we must stay cautious. Data smooths reality. It is invaluable for spotting patterns, but it can never replace asking the question and listening to the answer.

There is plenty of excitement about the latest ONS data release, which has fired the starting gun, but what matters now is how we run the race. The real craft lies in combining the precision of data with the depth of local insight, turning information into action and statistics into stories of change.

When we truly see the picture of place, we build not only better projects but fairer ones too.

Ellie Jenkins is a partner at Akerlof