Government names members of new Social Impact Investment Advisory Group

Dame Elizabeth Corley, former chief executive of Allianz Investors and current chair of Schroders, will chair the advisory group.

Among the members are Pete Gladwell, group managing director for public investment at Legal & General, which owns for-profit registered provider Legal & General Affordable Homes, and Tom Le Quesne, head of sustainable business at Lloyds Banking.

Lloyds has been a lender to the UK housing association sector for many years. In October the bank announced a partnership with the National Wealth Fund to provide social landlords with £500m of funding for retrofit works.

Kieron Boyle, chair of the Impact Investing Institute, and Stephen Muers, chief executive of Better Society Capital, are also members.

Other members include: Dominic Llewellyn, head of Impact Economy Collective; Robert Pollock, chief executive of Cambridge City Council; Alan Smith, first church estates commissioner; and Neil Heslop, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation.

Matthew Brockman, managing partner at Hg; Dame Caroline Mason, chief executive of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; and Michele Giddens, co-founder and chief executive of Bridges Fund Management, are the other members.

The Social Impact Investment Advisory Group will meet monthly until June and make recommendations for the objectives, design and intended social outcomes of one or more impact investment vehicles. These will be announced at the conclusion of the Spending Review in June this year, the government said.

Funds in scope will include, but are not limited to, social outcomes partnerships and match-funded philanthropic or other capital.

The group will also review existing work on impact capital across government and provide views on the long-term future and direction of this work, aligned with the missions. The government said this will complement and not replace its broader work on the impact economy.

The Social Impact Investment Advisory Group will report to Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, and Lisa Nandy, secretary of state for culture, media and sport.

Ms Nandy served as shadow housing secretary in the Labour Party from November 2021 until September 2023, when she was replaced by Angela Rayner and moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in a cabinet reshuffle.

A report from Better Society Capital in October found that social and affordable housing continued to account for more than half of the UK’s social impact investment market in 2023.