Measuring economic impacts

Our Economic Benefits Toolkit helps us understand and communicate socio-economic benefits to stakeholders during the planning process. Using the toolkit we can estimate the number of direct site and indirect supply chain jobs that our developments will create and their economic value, expected revenue gains for local businesses, the impact of new infrastructure and amenities, and new revenue for local authorities, including from council tax and business rates.

We are further developing our toolkit to include more analysis on the social value generated by our developments. We will be trialling this during 2024. 

Recent examples of developments assessed using our toolkit include:

• East Leeds Extension (Middle and Southern Quadrants). This scheme will help Leeds City Council meet their locally assessed housing needs, with 1,812 new homes of which 15% are affordable. It will create 530 jobs in construction, 800 in the supply chain, and a further 33 from new retail and education uses. The local authority is expected to gain £2.5 million in Council Tax revenues and £45,000 in new business rates payments from 280 metres squared of new retail floorspace. Local businesses will gain from expected resident expenditure of £34.1 million a year.
• Birkhill Avenue, Bishopbriggs. A development of 225 new homes is expected to bring a number of economic and community benefits including £4.1 million GVA contribution to the local economy each year. The scheme is expected to create 57 direct, 87 indirect and 48 supported jobs, and £5.8 million in annual expenditure by new residents.
• Kirkliston in Edinburgh. A development of 300 new homes which is expected to generate £5.2 million in GVA contribution as well as £7.7million in annual resident spend. The scheme is expected to create 73 direct, 111 indirect and 64 supported jobs.

Our sourcing with local suppliers of goods and services also contributes to the local economy around our developments.