THAMES FUTURES SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Thames Futures is a pioneering community-led social impact framework. It gives existing communities in Thames Ward the tools to measure whether growth and investment at Barking Riverside is leading meaningful social transformation. It aims to increase accountability, transparency and demonstrate best practice community collaboration.

BRL, the master developers at Barking Riverside, partnered with the Young Foundation and a team of locally trained community researchers to interview over 400 residents about their lived experience. This research created a bespoke social impact vision, a theory of change with evaluation metrics and a social impact baseline.

“The Community Vision”, a recently published document that outlines local people’s priorities for change with accompanying proposals from BRL, is now being utilised across the community. Seen by all stakeholders as an engine for positive change, The Community Vision is being fully integrated into BRL’s corporate plan, ensuring conversations about social impact are fundamental to all aspects of the development.