Are we using social impact assessment to shape better infrastructure decisions, or simply to assess choices already made?
Social impact assessment has developed significantly, but a familiar challenge remains: does it actually influence the decisions that shape projects?
Drawing on experience across major UK infrastructure programmes and smaller single site schemes, this contribution reflects on the gap between assessment and decision-making, and where practice is beginning to evolve.
The greatest opportunity for influence is often during optioneering, while fundamental choices about location, design and delivery remain open. Social and equality evidence can reveal who benefits, who bears the impacts and where effects may deepen existing inequalities. Yet this evidence can remain in specialist assessments and supporting appendices rather than being woven into business cases and the rationale for choosing between options. By the time impacts are assessed in detail, the question can become how to mitigate a preferred solution rather than whether a better one could have been chosen.
Practice is evolving. Community investment can sit alongside mitigation and compensation, creating opportunities to think more broadly about outcomes and legacy. More collaborative approaches can also give communities a meaningful role in shaping options and designs.
The challenge is not simply better assessment. It is getting social evidence and community knowledge into the right conversations at the right time. The test of good SIA should not only be how well it describes impacts, but whether it helps us choose and shape better solutions.
Sarah Marshall is a Senior Principal Consultant at Mott MacDonald, specialising in social impact, equality and inclusive design across UK infrastructure and development projects.