Supporting employment, skills and training opportunities for local people produces lasting social value. But it is also key to delivering long-term investment returns.
Read this article to understand:
- The government targets driving investment opportunities in UK real estate
- Why skills gaps in the built environment remain a critical risk for investors
- How a social value approach can help unlock investment value by solving the mismatch between job needs and skills
In December 2024, the UK government announced a plan to deliver 1.5 million new homes over five years and gave councils ambitious targets to build 370,000 homes a year. For real-estate investors, that constitutes a huge opportunity.1
Yet the government also underlined expectations that the councils’ plans would “work for their communities”. And positive social outcomes are now central goals for most public and private investors. Today, how investors build matters as much as what and where they build.
Developments that work for communities and help local areas become more prosperous can better meet those requirements, but also assist in securing planning permission and support assets’ long-term value.
At the same time, labour availability has emerged as a material constraint to the pace and scale of investment opportunities. Skills England estimates that around 900,000 additional skilled workers will be required across priority sectors by 2030, including construction, engineering and digital technologies.2
“This gap exposes investors to delivery risk, rising labour costs and, over the longer term, potential regulatory action,” says Emily Day, social value lead for private markets at Aviva Investors.3
“Developing skills programmes in construction and real estate is critical to mitigating those risks, by enabling new housing delivery and upskilling residents, as well as contributing to local areas’ economic growth,” she adds.
This is why we use a social value approach across our real-estate equity portfolios, addressing critical skills gaps for the built environment and fairly distributing economic opportunities to local communities through our assets. We believe this reinforces their long-term value through local prosperity.
We are also the asset management arm of Aviva – one of the UK’s largest long‑term investors, investing across homes, jobs and regeneration to support national growth and resilience. Our approach aligns to Aviva’s commitment to ensuring its investments deliver tangible benefits for the places and communities in which they are located.
Supporting returns, mitigating risks
Positive social outcomes are now core goals for most public and private investors.
“Being able to demonstrate impact meets many investors’ requirements, as well as allowing public-sector investments to align with the government’s goal of ensuring developments work for their communities,” says Tim Russell, senior fund manager for private markets at Aviva Investors.
Such alignment can also build trust with local stakeholders when obtaining planning permissions, as well as mitigating longer-term regulatory risk.
“In terms of returns, helping residents and local areas become more prosperous supports the long-term value of investments by making places more desirable,” notes Oliver Welch, investment director at Aviva Investors.
And because projects are developed and managed with and for the communities, they are more likely to be accepted and even welcomed.
Critically, addressing skills gaps through a social value programme also helps ensure projects have a sufficient workforce able to deliver them, in the near and longer term.
“It is a key risk-management tool for real-estate investors in the UK, to make sure investment value is not destroyed for a lack of execution,” says Sylvie Sasaki, sustainability director for real estate at Aviva Investors.
Maximising efficiency through an integrated, formalised approach
Our approach provides a practical mechanism to unlock the value across our real-estate investment opportunities, by addressing skills challenges without affecting the financial outcomes of non impact investment strategies.
We align with industry standards, such as those set out by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), and we integrate desired outcomes into our investment strategy. Social value is part of the sustainability brief for all our real-estate equity investments, meaning we have a prescribed standard for our development and operational supply chains.4
“Collaborating with industry experts – including government departments, industry bodies like the CITB, local education providers and employers across the supply chain – helps improve our programmes’ effectiveness,” says Day (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Growth of Aviva Investors’ social value programme
Source: Aviva Investors. As of 27 April 2026.
Distributing opportunities to communities
Our approach makes assets work harder for local communities by creating direct entry routes for people into construction and building services. We do this by collaborating with employers in our real-estate supply chain to provide education outreach, work experience, training and employment opportunities in the places where assets are located.
Combining quantitative outputs (such as jobs, apprenticeships and training hours) with qualitative insight into workers’ progress, experience and long-term outcomes helps ensure that social value contributes meaningfully to workforce resilience.5
“There’s an acute need for skilled construction workers across the country, but not enough young people are currently joining the trades,” says Paul Mason-Hughes, community and partnerships manager at New City College, the designated Construction Technical Excellence College (CTEC) for Greater London. “The construction industry is one of the biggest drivers of gross domestic product, so it’s important that we support people to secure careers in the sector through delivering high-quality skills and qualifications.”
Applying this approach consistently across real-asset portfolios can allow programmes to scale while responding to local labour-market needs and remaining aligned with long-term investment horizons.
Case study: Targeting youth unemployment
Nearly one million young people – approximately one in eight aged 16 to 24 – are not in education, employment or training (NEET). This is a rise of over 200,000 since 2022.6 At the same time, one of the key factors causing entry-level workforce shortages in construction is young people’s lack of awareness and confidence.7
“Through our social value programme, we engage with our real-estate partners and local education institutions to tackle these challenges,” says Day. “And we collaborate with the public sector to direct new jobs to NEETs in the communities where we develop properties.”
Since 2023, in partnership with our asset teams and employers in the supply chain, we have engaged with thousands of UK students and helped fill new jobs and work-experience placements (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Social value initiatives since 2023
Students engaged in
education outreach activities
Staff hours spent on supporting
local schools and colleges
Hours of education
outreach activities delivered
Work experience placements
(students, 18+ and T-levels)
New, sustained
local jobs for NEETs
Source: Aviva Investors. Data as of 12 May 2026.
For example, between January and March 2025, thanks to our partnerships with the DWP and local training providers such as New City College, we delivered a six-week work programme for nine local long-term unemployed jobseekers aged 19 and over.
Driving skills development in Milton Keynes
In another initiative, we have been working with Milton Keynes College since 2024 as part of the delivery of one of our development assets in Buckinghamshire. Delivered in partnership with Dandara and Packaged Living Homes, this programme introduces students to diverse roles within asset management and the built environment.
Since 2024, we have engaged 40 students studying for their Construction Management T Levels (a technical qualification broadly equivalent to three A levels) through an immersive learning programme.8 Students explored the development lifecycle, worked in teams to design real-estate proposals, and presented them to an investment panel. Dandara also committed to T-level work placements and expanding opportunities across regions.
In the most recent programme, students described the experience as “engaging, inspiring, and educational”, reinforcing the value of targeted interventions in driving social mobility and career readiness. Students reported that their career confidence had improved markedly, with 95 per cent feeling well-prepared to progress their education, up from 65 per cent before the programme.
Creating value for the long term
The role of the UK’s real-estate investors has been evolving. It is no longer enough to simply finance assets. Investors must also protect investment value and manage significant labour-market risks by supporting the training and skills development required to deliver housing and regeneration at scale.
“Embedding social value within real estate investment is a powerful way to achieve this,” says Sasaki. “It can increase confidence in asset delivery and investment returns, as well as workforce assurance and economic resilience in local communities, today and well into the future.”
