June 2025 – Y-PERN

Y-PERN’s 2025 Impact Report

July 5, 2025June 27, 2025 by ypern

Three-year report reveals ground-breaking collaboration between universities and policymakers drives regional development

Y-PERN’s 2025 Impact Report showcases three years of close collaboration between the region’s universities and policymakers that has transformed evidence-based decision-making across Yorkshire and the Humber.

Since its inception in 2022, Y-PERN has established itself as a critical bridge between the region’s universities and policymakers, fostering collaboration that harnesses Yorkshire and the Humber’s remarkable multidisciplinary academic expertise to address key policy challenges.

Together with our partners across our twelve universities, and wider network, we’re working on a shared endeavour towards regional supported through Y-PERN but recognising the region’s wider strength

Y-PERN has been fundamental to the Combined Authority, particularly in helping us to develop our Local Growth Plan. As a newly formed CA, we don’t have a large or established data resource in place and Y-PERN has helped to fill that gap and ensure our emerging strategies are evidence-led.

— Kate McHugh, Research and Evaluation Officer, York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority

Breaking Down Silos, Driving Action

Y-PERN’s innovative networked approach is successfully transforming academic engagement with policy, creating a “live laboratory” for regional development. The initiative has leveraged over £6 million in Research England funding to support evidence-led policymaking across diverse areas including skills development, childcare, female entrepreneurship, homelessness, and flood risk management.

A Model for the Future

As Yorkshire and the Humber continues to evolve with devolution – now with all regions covered by Mayoral Combined Authorities – Y-PERN’s collaborative model demonstrates the significant benefits that can be achieved when academia, policymakers, and communities unite under a common purpose for regional development.

“The Devolution Project has been a successful collaboration between Yorkshire and Humber Councils and Y-PERN, showcasing the region’s commitment to enhance local governance, drive innovation and support collaboration via devolution. At a time where devolution continues to build momentum, with all areas of the Yorkshire and Humber region now covered by an MCA or Strategic Authority, this project has been helpful in demonstrating the region’s strong support for collaboration and the potential for devolution to bring significant benefits to local communities.“

Florence Drew, Head of Chief Executive’s Office, Office of the Chief Executive Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council

As phase one of Y-PERN’s programme draws to its end and enters its transition year in 2025-2026, the report looks to the future and evaluates the impact that Y-PERN has had. It highlights Y-PERN’s unique Policy Fellow model, which embeds academic researchers directly within policy organizations, creating trusted partnerships that enhance both research quality and policy impact. This approach has proven particularly effective in providing specialised expertise where capacity is limited.

“Our findings indicate that the policy fellow role is crucial, as is a knowledge brokerage approach and Yorkshire Universities’ contribution. We found early signs of impact on policy development, with higher education also emerging as an effective alternative to consultants in certain contexts.“

– Dr Bridget Sealey, Stephen Meek and Claire Packman (with advisory support from Prof Kathryn Oliver), Sealey Associates (Y-PERN Evaluation team)

For more information about Y-PERN’s impact and future initiatives, visit our Impact report: Bridging academia and policy across Yorkshire & the Humber.

Data to make South Yorkshire an even better place

June 18, 2025 by ypern

This article was first published on the University of Sheffield’s website.

University of Sheffield data scientist Dan Olner is part of the pioneering team working with Y-PERN (The Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network), a partnership that links the worlds of academia and local government.

Making South Yorkshire an even better place to live and work isn’t simply about throwing public money at ‘off-the-peg’ initiatives.

It means developing bespoke policies and plans which reflect the voices of local people and the unique characteristics of the area itself – and that’s where the University of Sheffield comes in.

The University is one of 12 across Yorkshire and Humber that have teamed up to give the region’s local authorities the expert knowledge and data that they need to develop policies and plans tailored to the specific needs of people in their different authority areas – including ‘newly’ formed mayoral areas.

University of Sheffield data scientist Dan Olner is part of the pioneering team working with Y-PERN (The Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network), the new partnership linking the worlds of academia and local government.

Dan, who is an expert in economic geography, politics and international relations, as well as data science, is based in the University’s Management School but his Y-PERN role means spending lots of time at the offices of South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority (SYMCA) – the authority that he has been paired with.

Dan said: “Y-PERN is about strengthening the glue between Yorkshire and Humber’s universities and its local and mayoral authorities and I’m one of around a dozen academics embedded in the region’s local government bodies. Over the years, local policy spaces have lost a lot of the expertise that they once had, making it harder to have insight into what’s happening in our own regions. Y-PERN is playing a small part in helping turn that around – not by ‘transmitting expertise’ from universities, but by embedding within policy teams who are also experts in what they do, and collaborating deeply.”

“I’m regularly in SYMCA’s Sheffield office, working with them on specific projects. That experience has been fantastic – the level of daily collaboration is high. As one of the other fellows said: ‘The policy environment changes massively faster than academia,’ making for a very different structure and pace. And SYMCA is full of incredibly smart and dedicated people.”

Y-PERN is all about ‘place-based’ economics and generating data to make sure that Yorkshire’s councils are equipped to understand the current and future needs of the people in their different areas, the historic strengths and weaknesses – and the future opportunities too.

The partnership’s website explains that YPERN itself is ‘changing the way researchers and policy makers work together to develop inclusive, place-based policies across Yorkshire & the Humber.’

For Dan, the work means harnessing his research skills to gather evidence and data from around the world that contribute to the authority’s decision-making processes, its strategic objectives to build a stronger, greener, and fairer economy and what SYMCA calls its ‘good growth’ plan.

His projects so far include a report analysing the historic and recent growth of South Yorkshire’s different economic sectors against national trends.

He said: “You can’t know where you are now, without understanding what the past is, and you can’t work out where you’re going next unless you know where you are now. There are things that are quite specific and different about South Yorkshire. One of the things I’ve been helping to do is to develop the economic story of how South Yorkshire got to where it is today.”

Dan says that collaboration lies at the heart of Y-PERN, with academics like him working together with local authorities for a shared goal – the growth of the region – and not just simply filling a data shortage.

He said: “The relationship building is absolutely vital. So, you’re not just coming up with an abstract list of questions. Part of that process is developing the connections between people who are asking them, so that we can collaborate on pushing in the same direction.

“The mayors of authorities are currently going through a process of asking themselves, what questions do we need to answer? And then there’s a whole range of different ways in which they can think about filling those gaps. Building stronger connections with universities is one of the options they now have.”

He added: “None of this is about growth for growth’s sake. It’s about supporting growth that benefits everybody…One of the things that I’m trying to take little baby steps towards is to make sure that communities affected by data and analysis and evidence have a say in that and are never affected by something without having a say in it.”

The University of Sheffield is not just benefitting from it’s Knowledge Exchange work and strengthened relationships with the region’s local authorities. Its relationships with other nearby universities have been re-invigorated too.

Dan said: “Universities are often in competition, so building those collaborations to work on shared problems in the same place is really useful and we still get the outputs, which is what universities also want.”

Y-PERN would like to thank Pip Strafford from University of Sheffield for preparing this article on Dan Olner.

Boosting academic evidence in policymaking

June 6, 2025 by ypern

A £5.9 million fund has been awarded to universities in Yorkshire and the Humber, which jointly co-lead a national network aimed at enhancing place-based academic policy engagement.

The £5.9 million award to Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) provides a fantastic opportunity to draw out Y-PERN’s valuable learnings in co-production with UPEN on matters such as the diverse role a policy fellow plays, and the unique contributions of each individual university.

UPEN provides a platform for decision-makers to access relevant academic research as they seek to improve services for the public. That work can now be scaled up following a £5 million award by Research England to ten UPEN universities across the UK.

The investment will see UPEN evolve from a voluntary network into a sustainable organisation that connects policymakers with researchers from more than 110 university members.

The funding is supported by an additional £582,000 from UK Research and Innovation and £300,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Professor Andrew Brown, Y-PERN Academic Director and Professor of Economics and Political Economy at Leeds University Business School, is one of three UPEN co-chairs.

Professor Brown said:

“The new UPEN investment will be another vital step in facilitating the use of academic research capacity for policy across the UK. I am particularly pleased that it builds on the network approach pioneered at a regional scale by Y-PERN.”

Members of the UPEN National Executive Committee also include Kayleigh Renberg-Fawcett, Senior Programme Manager at Y-PERN and Dr Andy Mycock, Y-PERN Chief Policy Fellow.

With a renewed government focus on an evidence-based approach, UPEN will unite the research and innovation ecosystem

Professor Nick Plant, University of Leeds

Over the next four years, UPEN will undertake a programme of work including:

Improving UK universities’ ability to engage with policy organisations and policymakers.

Supporting place-based policymaking by strengthening engagement between universities, regional and local policy organisations.

Embedding citizen engagement and community-driven approaches to policymaking.

Creating more sustainable and resilient engagement models.

Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair of Research England, said: “The need for reliable evidence which can inform public debate, and policy has never been greater. 

“With increasing pressure on public finances, it is also vital that local and central governments can be confident that their policy interventions will be effective and successful – and academic expertise has a crucial role to play in that process.” 

Professor Nick Plant, Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation at the University of Leeds, said: “This funding will further support our community of researchers to work with policymakers to generate the evidence base required to address the complex challenges facing society today.

“With a renewed government focus on an evidence-based approach, UPEN will unite the research and innovation ecosystem, offering a wealth of academic insight and experience to inform policy decisions and improve outcomes.”

The investment sees the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Cambridge, Durham, Huddersfield, UCL, Nottingham Trent, Southampton, Teesside, Insights North-East and the Wales Centre for Public Policy at Cardiff University all working collaboratively to strengthen evidence-informed policymaking.

UPEN will also work with the Institute for Community Studies, the Institute for Government and Yorkshire Universities. The organisation will bring together our Yorkshire and Humber regional networks, including  Yorkshire Policy and Innovation Partnership (Y-PIP) and The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber.

We hope that together, we will draw upon our collective experiences to strengthen engagement between academic institutions and policymakers, ensuring that evidence shapes effective public policies.

UPEN is a UK-wide network of organisations who support evidence use in public policymaking. It provides an interface between universities and local, regional, and national policy organisations. It is hosted by UCL within UCL Public Policy, and co-chaired by Sarah Chaytor, Director of Policy and Strategy at UCL, Andrew Brown, Professor of Economics and Political Economy at the University of Leeds and Chris Hewson, Head of Policy Engagement at the University of Huddersfield.

For UPEN enquiries, contact hello@upen.ac.uk

Breaking Down Silos, Driving Action

A Model for the Future

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