Investing in inclusion
At Bridges, we believe that investing in a more inclusive society – one where more people are able to thrive and fulfil their potential – is a prerequisite for long-term growth, prosperity and stability.
As we have seen with sustainability, after a decade of positive progress in this area, the last couple of years have been much more difficult. In the U.S. particularly, DEI has in some quarters become synonymous with unearned or undeserved opportunity – causing corporations to quietly roll back or shelve their diversity programmes.
Across the world, social spending programmes are being cut as governments battle with challenging fiscal conditions – while many countries are still experiencing a cost-of-living crisis that disproportionately affects the less well-off. Foreign aid spending is also coming under political pressure: one obvious example is the closure of USAID, which has had a hugely negative impact on millions of lives in the developing world.
The world remains an unfair place for many: people’s life chances (even their life expectancy) are still largely dictated by where they’re born, the bodies they’re born into, and their family circumstances.
We continue to believe that Bridges’ focus on inclusion will drive better outcomes for our investors, for our partners, and for the broader economy
But – especially in the face of this backlash – it’s important that we continue to make the case that inclusion is not simply about fairness. It’s about building a stronger, more productive workforce – by enabling more people to work and raising skill levels. It’s about companies attracting and retaining the very best people – by looking at a broader, more diverse talent pool. It’s about promoting better decision-making, by bringing a broader range of voices to the table and creating a more supportive environment for those voices to be heard. And it’s about opening up new markets, by understanding customer groups that may previously have been overlooked.
That’s why we continue to believe that Bridges’ focus on inclusion will drive better outcomes for our investors, for our partners, and for the broader economy.
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Equally, the social challenges we face are not going away. In some cases, they’re getting worse. So it’s more important than ever that impact investors step up and – working alongside governments where necessary – continue to design and implement solutions.
Housing is a great example. The lack of access to quality housing is one of the UK’s biggest challenges: it has profound consequences for physical and mental health, employment, education, social mobility, climate change and more – as we explored in Home Truths, one of our Bridges Insights publications this year.
Solving this problem will be an enormous undertaking: it will require government, private capital and the third sector to work together in entirely new ways. In this section, we look at our latest housing development in Southwark Bridge Road in London, where we are working closely with our long-term partner HUB and the local council to design the best possible solution for the community.
Another area where we continue to believe impact investing can play a role – in partnership with the state – is in the care of looked-after children. New Reflexions, which provides high-quality education, therapy and care to some of the UK’s most vulnerable young people, is a great example of that, and it has had another successful year.
Finally, this section also features Alina Homecare, which provides care for the elderly in the comfort of their own homes. Again, this is an area where state provision is unlikely to be sufficient to meet the demand from our growing elderly population, so impact-driven businesses will need to step up to fill the gaps.
CASE STUDY: PRIVATE EQUITY
Providing high-quality homecare to the elderly
THESIS
Between 2024 and 2040, the UK’s elderly population is set to increase by about 2% per annum; by 2040, there will be 1m more people aged 80-85 than there are today. Coupled with the rise in chronic health conditions and increasing pressures on the primary care system, this creates an ever-growing need for high-quality care in the home that allows older people to continue living independently.
INVESTMENT
Alina Homecare is a leading UK provider of care that helps vulnerable elderly people live independently at home. Bridges first invested in Alina in 2014, via an earlier private equity fund. This year – following an adviser-led competitive sale process – we completed a new investment in the business via our Inclusive Growth strategy, which focuses on growth businesses that are delivering positive outcomes for vulnerable people in the UK. Alina’s focus on providing quality employment for carers, to enable better care for its clients, makes it a perfect fit for Inclusive Growth. And given demographic trends, the demand for Alina’s high-quality homecare will only increase in the coming years.
OUTCOMES
Alina has become a market leader in this sector, delivering 1.1m hours of care to over 1,300 people across England last year. It has a strong focus on quality provision: 100% of its assessed branches are rated Good or Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, and it enjoys 99% service user satisfaction.
The key enabler of this is its highly engaged and motivated workforce. Alina employs 100% of its carers and has a strong employee value proposition, particularly in terms of training, progression and pay. As a result, it has employee satisfaction of 98% and an Indeed rating of 4.2, both well ahead of the industry average. This helps it to recruit and retain high-quality carers, and support them to deliver the best possible care for service users.
CASE STUDY: PROPERTY
High-quality sustainable co-living units in prime Central London
Across Europe, demand for housing is rising, due to population growth and the increase in single-person households. But supply is failing to keep pace: in the UK, the average number of new homes built annually over the last decade has been barely half the amount required, while the steady rise in house prices has pushed more people into the already overstretched rental market. We need to build more high-quality housing. But we also need to be conscious of how this will affect our overall carbon footprint.
Co-living, an increasingly popular residential concept that combines private living space with communal amenities, helps us tackle both these challenges. It is a low-carbon, higher-density model that allows us to repurpose under-used urban buildings, in a way that combats social isolation and broadens access to quality housing.
In March, Bridges’ Property Funds completed the off-market acquisition of a vacant office building at 42 Southwark Bridge Road, London, alongside our development partner HUB. Our plan is to retain the existing building and obtain planning approval to repurpose the existing office site into a living-led scheme.
The building sits in a vibrant, prominent location. It is well-connected, with easy access to sustainable public transport, in a community with a large local workforce and a high demand for new homes – notably from key workers at Guy's Hospital, a 12-minute walk away.
Our goal is to retrofit this vacant office – which has not provided employment space for nearly 25 years – into a sustainable, low-carbon co-living development for over 300 people. This approach – our third office-to-living conversion – allows for a significant reduction in embodied carbon (30% versus standard benchmarks), while energy-efficiency measures should also reduce operational carbon by 35% versus benchmarks. The development is expected to meet or exceed BREEAM Excellent.
Providing integrated care, therapy and education to young people with complex needs
There were 83,630 looked-after children in England in 2024, of whom 8,600 were in residential care – an increase of 22% from 2020. Given that a high proportion (2,000/ 23%) of these children have been placed in residential homes rated ‘Inadequate’ or ‘Requires Improvement’, and a further 900+ children placed in unregulated settings, there is a clear need for high-quality providers who can provide safe, nurturing residential settings and quality education for children in their local area.
New Reflexions is a sector leader in high-quality and integrated therapeutic care delivery and support for young people with complex social, emotional and mental health needs and/or severe learning disabilities. It operates 29 small children’s homes, and four specialist residential schools, which offer short-, medium- and long-term placements for these children that combine care, education, and therapy. This approach means that it is well-positioned to respond to the market shift from institutional residential childcare towards integrated, community-based solutions.
New Reflexions continued to add to its care and education provision this year, further scaling its flagship residential school The Fitzroy Academy (opened 2022) and opening the adjacent Main House in early 2025.
New Reflexions' primary focus is on delivering exceptional quality care, education, and therapy to the young people in its services. Ofsted inspections are a good gauge of this: at the end of its last reporting period, 100% of New Reflexions’ eligible services were rated by Ofsted as “Good” or “Outstanding”. Last year it delivered about 25,000 care days to some of the most vulnerable young people in the UK.
