The true impact of landowners: members provide £8.7bn in community value

Last summer we published the results of a CLA-commissioned research study ‘An SROI assessment of the social value derived from the activities of landowners’, which many members will know as our ‘social value project’.

The aim of this project was to document and quantify the ways that rural landowners contribute to their communities, from investing in village halls to generating renewable energy. The key finding was that CLA member activities could generate £8.7bn per year to the economy, but the report gave us a whole range of data, demonstrating the scale and range of activities that our members are involved in.

One such example is community participation, which had a potential value of £2.5bn per year. CLA members’ investment in village halls, play equipment, and places for people to meet amounted to £7,300 per year on average, with 1,530 people benefitting per member. Rural life can be isolating, so these activities are crucial in keeping communities thriving.

The full report, produced by the National Innovation Centre for Rural England (NICRE) and the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI), spanned some 128 pages. While the data within the document has been incredibly helpful for our lobbying work, the lengthy report is more suited to academics. However, the research team has now produced a more user-friendly ‘key message’ document, which is available to read and easily digest below.

More than 300 CLA members completed the social value survey, owning an average of 527 acres. The survey asked for estimates of the time and money invested by the landowner into activities, across different categories.

Because rural land managers engage in a such a variety of activities to support their local communities, the research team split landowners into five ‘impact pathways’, shown below, which are essentially the benefits that they provided.

One of the key discoveries was the fact that private investment by landowners is a major driver in delivering benefits; including environmental conservation, access, and education. While this will not be a surprise to many CLA members, it is useful to have evidence of the benefits that land managers are providing off their own backs. Although grant funding is behind some of the benefits delivered, in most areas only a small percentage of CLA members had received grants.

The data suggests that larger landowners (defined in the study as owning over 1,000 acres) are more likely to invest in capital-heavy projects, like broadband infrastructure or visitor facilities. The research showed that smaller landowners also make meaningful time and capital contributions, but have less capital to invest. Some of the most time-intensive activities identified were providing housing, generating renewable energy, and providing visitor infrastructure. The research also found that the mean annual person days invested per CLA landowner on keeping land clean and tidy was 12 days per year.

There are a huge number of interesting statistics and findings within the report; this infographic above shows just a few of the ways CLA members are helping their communities.