Business leaders and campaigners will come together on the first anniversary of the Public Services (Social Value) Act to review its success and plan for the future at the UK’s first Social Value Summit later this month.
The event takes place on the 28-29 January 2014 at the well-known social enterprise venue Dartington Hall in Devon. However, summit organisers Landmarc Support Services and Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), invite interested parties to join the debate online at www.socialvaluesummit.org
Visitors to the website will be able to watch the debate live and interact with the speakers by posting questions and responses via the Landmarc or SEUK Twitter feeds using the hashtag #svsummit. Visitors will also be able to register to receive a copy of a White Paper that will be produced following the event.
Chris White, MP for Warwick and Leamington and the UK’s first Social Value Ambassador will open the Summit with his keynote speech on Tuesday 28th January and Hazel Blears, MP for Salford and Eccles, will deliver the closing speech on Wednesday 29th January.
Other speakers include Alan Knight from Business in the Community, Tim Haywood, Group Finance Director and Head of Sustainability at Interserve, Simon Hodgson, Chief Executive of Forest Enterprise England and Jane Baptist, Assistant Head of Sustainability at the Crown Estate. Dartington Hall CEO Vaughan Lindsay will also talk about social value in action at Dartington Hall.
The Social Value Summit follows the launch of Landmarc’s first social impact report at the SEUK conference in Bristol in September last year, demonstrating the positive social, environmental and economic outcomes of the company’s UK operations.
The report, entitled ‘The Landmarc Difference’ was produced by CAN Invest, experts in social impact consultancy and reporting and SEUK. It establishes a baseline for shared value activity across the company’s activities, in its delivery of support services on the Ministry of Defence’s national training estate.
Steve Utley, Project Director at Landmarc Support Services commented, “Landmarc’s ethic is to seek to create and add value in all aspects of our business activities; for our clients, employees, the rural communities in which we operate and our shareholders, so we think that it’s important that as many people as possible have the opportunity to join in and help shape the debate at our first Summit.
“As members of Social Enterprise UK, we have found their support invaluable in setting out the options available to us as a business as we engage with the social element of our company’s mission. We’re pleased that we’re able to continue our work by helping to shape the next phase of the social value journey.”
Nick Temple, Director of Business at Social Enterprise UK said, “Social Value is an idea whose time has come, and we are approached daily by increasingly influential people in the private, public and social sectors, as well as from Government and the Opposition, they want to know what’s next. So far we’ve seen only a fraction of the influence the social value concept will undoubtedly have over economic life in the UK. In one year the Act has lit a touch-paper but the development of social value needs widespread support if the idea is to reach anything like its full potential.
“We’re delighted to be co-hosting this event with one of SEUK’s biggest corporate members and that it will be taking place at a venue run by another member. Our members have been pioneers in the campaign for social value. They are in the business of creating and quantifying it every day, and turning it into competitive advantage.”
The Social Value Summit website (www.socialvaluesummit.org) will open on the 23rd January 2013.