Places for London

In partnership with Heart of the City, Places for London launched a year-long programme in March 2025 to provide up to 40 of their tenants – many of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – with essential training, including support to create social value and become more sustainable. Based in 16 London boroughs, the SMEs that participated in the programme attended 86 responsible business events across the course of the year.  

Participants had access to online and in-person events, including Lunch and Learns, workshops, surgeries, networking sessions, and five bespoke events. They also benefited from Heart of the City’s online learning platform, one-to-one support from the team, and opportunities to connect with a wider network of alumni and experts from leading corporates. 

The programme was a success, with businesses who took part increasing their knowledge and understanding of responsible business practices, and taking meaningful steps to embed sustainability and social value across their operations. Participants reported a wide range of benefits, including improved compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, stronger alignment with ethical values, enhanced brand reputation, and increased competitiveness in tenders. Many also saw improvements in staff recruitment and retention, noted enhanced employee skills and personal development, and valued the opportunity to build a network of like-minded peers. 

We spoke with Tom Atkinson, Senior Strategy and Planning Manager at Places for London (The TfL Property Company) about how the training programme helped them as a landlord to support their tenants to succeed and play an integral part within their local communities. The new training for tenants is just one of many initiatives Places for London is implementing to support and improve its existing property estate.

What motivated Places for London to work with Heart of the City?

We’d seen Heart of the City working with Grosvenor’s small business supply chain and delivering Minority Business Matters alongside MSDUK, and we wanted to test if that approach could work with our customers. We want to support our customers, their businesses and their staff to thrive, and so Heart of the City’s message that ‘every business can be a force for good’ really chimed with me.

How did delivering this programme align with the Places for London’s values and long-term goals?

At Places for London, we are committed to working with our property customers (our tenants) as partners. It’s a key part of our social value plan. We know that their success is our success, and this approach is not just a way to meet our financial objectives but also our environmental and social objectives. 95% of our customers – whether in our railway arches, shops or offices – are small businesses. We know they’re time poor but care deeply about the city, their staff and their communities.

Heart of the City’s Foundations for Responsible Business programme meant we could explore different aspects of responsible business with our customers, knowing that some might want to focus on reducing their carbon emissions and some might want to create a shared company vision and set of values for their employees. It all moves us towards the city we want in the future.

What aspects of the programme did your tenants found the most valuable?

Any chance to get together and network! Whether than was our own workshops or the wider events run by Heart of the City, our cohort of small business loved meeting up with like-minded business owners, sharing their perspectives and learning from others.

Can you highlight any standout participants and the recognition they received through the programme?

We would certainly highlight one of our participants, Raw Bloom (a florist), who received the ‘Impact Award’, a recognition jointly created by Heart of the City and Places for London to celebrate Raw Bloom’s achievements. During the programme, they became an accredited Living Wage employer, were recognised by the Good Business Charter, and went on to complete Heart of the City’s Net Zero Accelerator programme.

A special mention also goes to the following businesses, who were highly engaged throughout the programme, making changes to their operations and adding social value to the communities in which they are based: Gramos Coffee, Perky Blenders, On the Hoof, and Active 360.

How would you describe your overall experience with the programme and working with the Heart of the City team?

It’s been a really positive learning experience – and in more ways than one. We’ve been able to support several of our customers to make real progress in becoming ever more responsible businesses, which is a real achievement for us.
The programme has also equipped us to learn more about how to better support the small businesses on our estate — something we’ll build on as we expand our own skills programme.

What advice would you give to other organisations considering supporting SMEs in their supply chain to be more responsible and sustainable in their business operations?

Small businesses are time poor, so they need accessible tools to learn and grow at their fingertips. Finding solutions, trying out new things, and acquiring new skills is what they do day in day out, and it’s our job to make it easy for them. We understand that they like access to in-person events and networking opportunities, where that social aspect can be combined with learning and expert guidance.

“Overall, we know that working with small businesses results in quicker, more direct impact. Changes can be made almost immediately, whether it’s a commitment to pay the London Living Wage or make changes to packaging or marketing. They might just be the big businesses of tomorrow – so working closely with them and supporting their responsible business development is a great way to deepen our business relationship.”

What was your overall highlight from the programme?

Hearing details of the impact of being part of Heart of the City’s programme at our end of year celebration in February 2025 was a real highlight for us. How it had made our customers feel more part of the Places for London community – or family – and how it had resulted in real, positive changes for their businesses.

Feedback from participants 

“I think Heart of the City’s programme is super cool – we need more things like this to help small businesses to be more sustainable!” 

“We have contacted many more local people and other small businesses in the area and asked them to talk to us about their environmental goals and responsible business strategies, which we have never done before. This programme gave us tools and even (as simple as) vocabulary to start such conversations, collaborate and improve our own work.”  

“We completed the Good Business Charter, Living Wage Accreditation, and we are trialing Com:post (a company purely working with us to turn all green waste into fertilisers). We are also now working towards Net Zero as a result of the programme.”  

“Overall, we feel we now have more tools to use in our business from participating in the programme and now have the courage to develop our business in line with our vision. We also now have language that we can use to express our ideas to our customers. We are more confident and know now that we are not alone as an SME in this world.”  

“We are advocating for the elimination of the use of single use plastics in pubs/bars/venues”.  

“We have focused directly on Company Values and supporting what our team actually values – the programme was a catalyst for this. We have seen where we have short-comings on our environmental work – so are working on a strategy to reduce, reuse and recycle.” 

If you’re working for an organisation and would like to support your supply chain to become more sustainable, or understand responsible businesses, visit our programmes page here, or you can get in touch at: info@theheartofthecity.com