Social Value: What are the key recommendations on how pubs and publicans can help communities with local services?

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The social value that pubs and publicans have created by providing local services during the first Covid-19 lockdown has been unveiled by Pub is The Hub in the new evaluation called ‘The Social Value of Pubs and Publicans providing Services in their Communities.’

Key summary points from ‘The Social Value of Pubs and Publicans providing Services in their Communities.’

 

  • For every £1 invested in a project it has been established that between £8.98 and £9.24 of additional social value was created per project from the range of services or activities created.

 

  • Both rural and some urban pubs have been found to offer individual local solutions to a broad range of social policy priorities and deliver projects which have a large social impact for a relatively low-cost investment.

 

  • Local and national policy makers should understand that social and enterprise policies can be very closely related particularly in remoter rural community areas and projects are often reliant on the involvement of an inspired publican to really make it happen and take the lead.

 

 

  • A good publican and a pub together can offer a powerful collective resource to tackle many of the most pressing societal priorities. This can include local jobs, supporting an ageing population, overcoming the reduction in essential local services and helping with social isolation and loneliness issues. These were able to be quantified in recognised social value terms during the Covid-19 lockdown.

 

  • To realise the future social value potential of local pubs and their publicans, the owners, Government, local authorities and other public bodies and trade associations care recommended to:
    • Build collaborative partnerships to encourage publicans within their local area to deliver solutions to meet local priorities e.g. Regional Hubs.
    • Increase advisory support for busy publicans to embrace diversification and connect to customers’   current needs in the local area.
    • Encourage specific funding for digital services infrastructure and training for pubs to recognise their long-term social role in an everchanging society.
    • The availability of new local services diversification grant funding over a longer term e.g. three years, would  inspire considerably more publicans and pubs to embrace reopening after the Covid-19 storm and help plan the permanent repositioning of rural and other services and local isolation issues which can now support a social value growth and return as well as aiding Government priorities for the economic recovery.

 

Pictured above is pub manager Jade Dillon serving a customer in the village store of The Green Man in Scamblesby, near Louth and Publicans Natalie Dyson and Jane Johnson in the village store at The Red Lion Inn in Shobrooke, near Crediton.