Social Outcomes Conference 2026

Earlier this month I joined about 250 people in person, and the same again online, at this year’s Social Outcomes Conference 2026 at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

This was my first time, but this 9^th annual conference brought together researchers, policymakers, investors and practitioners from around the world to explore whether relational cross-sector partnerships hold the key to better social outcomes.

It is a question with particular relevance to property development.

I was there with Sophie White of Aviva Capital Partners and Gavin Barlow of the Albany to lead a session entitled Unpacking the UK’s first Relational Property Development Agreement. We used our partnership between the Albany, Stories and Aviva in Deptford as a practical case study.

Our project in Deptford aims to renew and secure the long-term future of the Albany, an important arts and community institution. The emerging proposals involve creating housing accommodation on part of the site, with value generated by the development helping to fund the renewal of the Albany’s building.

This is exactly the kind of project that conventional development agreements can struggle to accommodate.

A traditional development agreement generally assumes that the parties can define the project, allocate its risks and prescribe the required outputs at the outset. That can work well where the outcome is relatively certain and the parties’ interests are aligned and relatively straightforward (solving for a fair developer return and land value for example).

But projects such as the Albany are different as they involve several organisations with distinct responsibilities, constraints and cultures. The property solution must support financial returns, safeguard a much-loved community institution, respond to local people and deliver wider social outcomes. The project will also change as consultation, design, planning and viability work progress.

No contract can anticipate every decision that will arise over the life of such a partnership.

That does not mean abandoning contractual discipline. A relational development agreement is not a substitute for clear obligations, proper governance or commercial accountability. Nor is it simply an agreement to behave reasonably and hope that relationships remain cordial.

Instead, it seeks to combine the rigour of a formal contract with an operating framework that helps the parties solve problems together.

That can include a clearly articulated shared purpose; agreed principles for decision-making; open-book financial information; governance involving the right people at the right time; early escalation of emerging issues; and a structured process for resolving differences before positions become entrenched.

Most importantly, it recognises that relationships are not incidental to delivery. They are part of the project’s infrastructure.

Our discussion in Oxford surfaced several important challenges.

• How do you maintain relational behaviours when personnel change?

• How do you demonstrate that flexibility has not weakened accountability?

• How should decisions be made when the parties’ interests do not fully align?

• And how can a relational approach survive the pressure created by cost increases, delay or a difficult planning process?

There are no easy answers. But pretending that a sufficiently long contract can remove these uncertainties is not an answer either.

One of my strongest impressions from the conference was how similar these questions are across sectors. Whether people are delivering health services, education programmes or major regeneration projects, the central challenge is often the same: how do we create partnerships that are accountable enough to protect the parties and flexible enough to respond intelligently to reality?

For property development, this feels particularly important. We spend considerable time allocating risk, but sometimes much less time designing how the people carrying that risk will work together. The result can be agreements that are legally comprehensive but operationally adversarial.

Relational contracting offers an opportunity to think differently - not by removing commercial tension, but by creating better ways of managing it.

The Albany project is still developing, and the value of the approach will ultimately be demonstrated through delivery rather than terminology. As we said in the room, our relationships haven't been properly tested yet. Nothing has gone wrong (yet). But I believe the work has relevance well beyond one project.

Many of the most important development opportunities facing our towns and cities sit at the intersection of public purpose, community ownership and institutional investment. They cannot be delivered successfully by any one party acting alone.

Thank you to Sophie and Gavin for presenting alongside me, to everyone who contributed so openly to the discussion, and to the Government Outcomes Lab team for creating a genuinely thoughtful exchange between research and practice.

As I said previously, we are committed to working in public where this relational approach to property development is concerned and we will share lessons as we go. The questions above will be part of what we will track as we go.