Can your partnership report distance travelled and social value to Welsh Government?

Short answer: yes. If you’re a Regional Skills Partnership, an anchor institution, a third-sector body or any organisation that reports up to Welsh Government, you can capture two things from the work happening across your partners — the distance travelled (the change in people) and the social value in pounds — and roll them into a figure you report up. Here’s how, and why now is the moment.

Why this is landing now

The expectation has shifted from “how many sessions did you run?” to “what changed, and what was it worth?”. Wales’ socially responsible procurement duties are in force, and outcomes-based reporting is the direction of travel across Welsh Government programmes. The problem most partnerships hit: the everyday social value and the soft outcomes — a confidence-building session, a careers encounter, a wellbeing programme — rarely reach the big enterprise reporting systems. They fall through the gap. So the figure that lands on a Welsh Government desk understates what actually happened on the ground.

What you’d actually do

1. Capture distance travelled. At a session or across a programme, ask the group a simple before/after question on a 1–10 scale — confidence, skills, readiness for work, wellbeing. It’s anonymous and group-level: no named individuals, low GDPR risk. The rise is the distance travelled. See the tool →
2. Cost the social value. Log the staff hours behind the activity and Owl Impact converts them into a costed figure in pounds, using a recognised national proxy. Two minutes, no spreadsheet. Log a session →
3. Aggregate across your partners. Every logged activity rolls up — by project, by sector, by region and over time — into one costed total and the distance travelled behind it. See aggregate insight →
4. Report the figure up. You hand Welsh Government a dated, costed, outcomes-backed number — the social value generated and the change made — instead of an activity count.

Why it fits a partnership especially well

You sit above the delivery, which makes you the natural aggregator. The work happens across your partners; Owl Impact lets each capture it in two minutes, and you see the whole picture. Because the partnership can badge the reports under its own name, your network’s impact is evidenced as one body of work. And because the outcome data is anonymous and group-level, you get the evidence without the safeguarding and GDPR weight of holding data on individuals.