Tim Heatley: How my childhood shaped my view of social impact.

Developers are often thought of as Bentley-driving, Rolex-wearing sorts with slicked-back hair and a pinstripe suit, hoping to turn any nearby field into a sea of shoebox-sized houses. So when I tell people that Capital&Centric is a social impact developer they are quite rightly cynical; what does social impact developer mean? Why bother creating a positive social impact if that doesn’t make money?

The truth is there are a few reasons why we do it. One of them is that it’s good for businesses – our projects focus on creating high-quality jobs in locations of high worklessness, or creating super energy-efficient spaces, or restoring and preserving historic buildings.

The recent BBC documentary Manctopia covered the fact that we typically ban buy-to-let investors from buying our homes and give “first dibs” to owner-occupiers. All of this means that because our projects are helping with social issues they are more likely to get the support of the planners, the residents and wider community. But there is another major factor.

Care in the community.

I grew up in Salford, a city that had extremely high levels of deprivation. My mum and dad were both care workers so you learn a lot from just hearing about their day at work, but they also agreed with Salford Council to care for young adults with severe learning difficulties in our own family home.

So for as far back as I can remember – and up until the day I moved out – there were two other people in our lovely, comfortable home.

It was a pioneering approach to care in the community and it has since been replicated by many thousands of households across the UK. Those people were extremely vulnerable and through no fault of their own they were hugely disadvantaged in life.

Then my dad lost his job when I was about 13. We were a household of seven and that’s a big old food bill. So me and my two siblings qualified for free school meals. I remember feeling humiliated waiting last in line to pick up my “free lunch ticket” as the other kids sat eating their packed lunch looked on.

We had to make a lot of changes as a household to make ends meet. It was a stark reminder of how quickly things can change for people, no matter how hard working or well intentioned, and I was the lucky one. Some of the other kids in the free school meal line were only eating once a day, living in care, on the margins of society.

Beyond placemaking.

So I grew up with other people who were in need of special care, support, or protection because of their circumstances, disability or risk of abuse and neglect. That experience never leaves you and is what motivates me to try and help, to be pioneering in the way my parents were.

It’s why we want to create a positive social impact, it’s why we set up Regeneration Brainery and co-founded the Embassy Bus and the Greater Manchester Mayor Charity amongst our other initiatives.

We want to create great places, and the measure of any place should be how its community looks after those unable to look after themselves. It goes beyond placemaking. It’s community curation and developers have a huge role to play in its success.

This blog was extracted from this Estates Gazette opinion piece.