Mark's Blog

‘Social investment is the use of repayable finance to help an organisation achieve a social purpose’

P3 first ventured into the investment world a few years ago by delivering two ‘Social Impact Bond’ projects working with young people, and then a further two more that you heard all about last week, working with adults who had a long history of sleeping outside and complex needs. These were all projects achieving amazing results and long-term positive outcomes!

So what comes next ...? The most obvious answer was to raise investment to buy property, though we weren’t just looking for property, we wanted ‘homes’; places where people could stay forever, decorate how they wanted and have a pet or raise a family.

We started talking to SASC (Social and Sustainable Capital) who are social investors with a focus on housing. They had a large pot of money to lend to charities to purchase housing across the UK. After lots of talking, financial modelling, checking of P3 documents, visits to Sam and co. in Wolves, and me and Jo nearly pulling our hair out … we secured an investment of £3 million approved to purchase 34 units of accommodation in Wolverhampton.

Why am I telling you this ... well, you might have seen on Facebook Workplace that we have just purchased the first few properties and our first tenants have moved in (you can read more about them below). It’s such a massive achievement to get to this stage where people are getting keys to their own front door, knowing that they can settle! Over the next few months get ready to be spammed with pictures of big smiley faces and people standing in their new front room or posing in their gardens – looking forward to the future.

On top of this our amazing team at P3 (you!) managed to support nearly 1,000 more people across the UK during the pandemic: people who were accessing hotels/temporary accommodation/ B&Bs under the ‘Everyone In’ campaign.

Local authorities and commissioners started to talk to us about the next phase ‘Everyone In for Good’ and how we could help, so we went back to SASC and asked for some more money. They were happy to oblige and we were lucky to have been awarded a further £3 million for Gloucestershire and £3 million for Lincolnshire ... the property team are going to be busy!

We hope this investment into property will be the start of something exciting and continue to look at ways in which we can find long-term homes for the people we work alongside.

And finally … still on the property theme, you might remember a while ago I told you about an exciting housing project in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. We have worked with the council to develop a project that will see P3 purchasing, renovating and letting over 100 homes in the area.

This project is a bit different to normal P3 services, as it is about the regeneration of an area, improving street scenes, encouraging people to move into the area and destabilising rogue landlords. It’s taken a while to get this off the ground, but I am so excited to say that we are ready to get started, we have raised £5 million pounds for the project, have a new team ready and raring to go and our first offers are in on properties, so watch this space to see how it progresses.

I am sure this won’t be the last you hear about P3’s mission to provide amazing homes for people but for now we have plenty to be getting on with and we will keep you updated!