Page 15 - MarketTimesDecember2018
P. 15

                MARKET TIMES • DECEMBER 2018 15
Report equips markets with
new tools for measuring
social and cultural value
By ADRIAN BUA, New Economics Foundation, and MYFANWY TAYLOR, University of Leeds
  IN A TIME when some traditional retail markets are fighting to survive, a new report from the New Economics Foundation and the University of Leeds aims to better equip the sector to demonstrate its holistic economic, social and cultural value.
The report is an early output from a research collaboration involving NMTF as well as the University of Leeds, NEF and the Open University, which aims to understand and enhance the community value of traditional retail markets.
improvement plans to enhance the economic, social and cultural roles of markets.
 The report, launched at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Markets Group last month, recognises the significant progress made by NMTF, NABMA and the wider sector in evidencing the economic value of traditional retail markets in the UK over the last ten years, and identifies an increasing interest in measuring social value.
The project aims to extend recent improvements in evidence and understanding about markets’ economic roles to incorporate their social and cultural benefits.
The report, Measuring the Value of Traditional Retail Markets: Towards a Holistic Approach, recognises the achievements of the NMTF and NABMA to reveal the economic value of traditional retail markets through successive national surveys of market traders and managers.
involves members of a community or those affected by a decision taking the lead in assessing priorities, options and impacts, for example develop an understanding of the value of a market to traders, customers and the wider community and how this value might be enhanced.
It recommends the sector continues to develop this research agenda by working both with established tools and methods for measuring economic and social value as well as grounded, bottom- up and participatory approaches involving traders, community and campaign groups.
Traditional retail markets are particularly important to lower- income, marginalised and vulnerable people and diverse ethnic groups, providing access to good quality, healthy and affordable fresh food, opportunities for social and cultural interaction and relatively low-cost and accessible trading.
It identifies a resurgence of interest in evidencing the social and cultural benefits of markets, building on work from the New Economics Foundation, which evidenced how some markets serve low-income and ethnically diverse communities in London.
The report cautions that there is no one ideal way to demonstrate the value of a market and recommends decision-makers take a context- specific approach which makes space for the views and experiences of the diverse communities which use, rely upon and value markets.
 By making use of tools to measure local economic multipliers, social return on investment and social impact, decision-makers will be better placed to ensure the important social and cultural roles of markets are retained and enhanced as they change and develop in coming years.
Despite these wide-ranging benefits, however, traditional retail markets remain under pressure from cuts to local government funding, urban regeneration projects that displace existing communities, competition from the wider retail industry and changing consumer behaviour.
The report highlights the efforts of community and campaign groups to demonstrate the value of loved local markets, including Friends of Queens Market, Wards Corner Community Coalition, Save Latin Village and Levenshulme Market, operated as a Community Interest Company.
In the next stage of the research project, the team will build on the report by developing and trialling new approaches to measuring community value in Queen’s Market (Newham, London), Bury MarketandNewcastle-upon-Tyne’s Grainger Market.
Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the project therefore aims to equip decision-makers with the tools and evidence they need to attract investment and develop sensitive
In addition, the report identifies three methods used in other sectors which could be adopted by traditional retail markets to generate further evidence about their economic and social value:
Interested traders, managers and campaigners are invited to keep in touch via the project blog and Twitter feed, and to participate in upcoming workshops.
The Local Multiplier 3 method can be used to calculate a local ‘economic multiplier’ to measure the wider impact on the local economy of every £1 spent by customers in a market, for example adding up the value of further spending by market traders through their supply chains.
Measuring the Value of Tradi- tional Retail Markets: Towards a Holistic Approach can be read on- line at: https://neweconomics.org/
 Social Return on Investment is the method recommended by the government for evidencing social value and involves estimating and adding up the monetary value of wider benefits resulting from every £1 invested in a market, for example savings to the NHS resulting from increasing access to healthy food through markets.
Further information about the research project can be found at: https://trmcommunityvalue.leeds.ac .uk/ and on Twitter (@Markets4People).
  Social Impact Assessment
 






































































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