Policy Report Series Townscapes - 7. The Value of Social Infrastructure

Considerable attention has been given of the state, with major investment needed to to the role and importance of various kinds stimulate an economic recovery and government of physical infrastructure project, such as the playing a major role in directing resources to rollout of full-fibre broadband, the expansion of poorer parts of the country (Collins 2021). [...] modern economy, it is unsurprising that so much Based on an extensive review of the disparate of the policy debate around levelling up in the UK literature devoted to the value and importance of has focused on headline-grabbing projects like the social infrastructure that underpins the lives HS2, the extension of 4G and 5G networks and of communities, as well as new data analysis, it upgrades to m. [...] community life is, according to some recent research, one of the driving forces behind the The framework we propose offers a corrective sense of decline and disempowerment which to the ingrained tendency to marginalise or has broken the political surface in recent years, overlook the ‘softer’ forms of infrastructure that in the UK and elsewhere (Bolet 2021). [...] centres and spaces – like women’s centres, churches and school halls – and they depend to a 27 The economic value of social infrastructure None of the benefits identified here can be key information sources about the number of easily accounted for in conventional monetary amenities in different places, their resourcing terms – with the exception perhaps of rates of and their levels of use. [...] We recommend that government, working through the ONS, works towards producing a better data repository, bringing together some of the 28 The social value of community infrastructure One of the defining features of social authorities in general, and governments in infrastructure is that it provides opportunities for particular, in relation to the infrastructure that members of a community, who mig.