The team at Y-PERN are pleased to present our Year 2 Regional Report.
The report, which summarises Y-PERN’s activity to date, reflects on what we have learnt about our impact and value, how Yorkshire and the Humber is leading the way in regional academic policy engagement and discusses how Universities can support multi-level governance for inclusive and sustainable growth.
The Y-PERN report evidences in detail how Yorkshire and the Humber is leading the way in regional academic policy engagement, and suggests how Universities can support multi-level governance for inclusive and sustainable growth. Let us continue to work together across the region for the benefit of the places we live in, work in & call home.
- Andrew Brown, Y-PERN Academic Director, Kersten England CBE, Y-PERN Engagement Director & Peter O’Brien, Y-PERN Policy Director
In the report, you’ll discover:
Activities and impacts from the Yorkshire sub-regions including:
o How Y-PERN synthesized ten projects related to early years education and childcare to help shape West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s economic strategy and local growth plan
o How Y-PERN’s academic insights on the region’s economic history and recent economic growth areas have fed into South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s Skills Strategy and Plan for Good Growth
How Y-PERN is working to connect and our region’s policy makers, researchers and community organisations
Emergent findings on local governance issues with Yorkshire and Humber being a ‘live laboratory’ for regional devolution
Strategical next steps for Y-PERN and the future of regional policy engagement
Discover how Y-PERN is transforming the way university academics and knowledge exchange experts work with policy partners across the region in our Y-PERN Year 2 Regional Report
Y-PERN hosted a meeting of the newly reconvened Yorkshire and Humber Councils Policy Officer Network (YHCPON) at the Cloth Hall Court in Leeds in January 2025. The meeting brought together local and combined authority policy and strategy officers from across the Yorkshire and Humber Councils network to discuss a range of issues.
The meeting was led by Professor Kersten England, the Y-PERN Director of Engagement, and Paul Hayes, Senior Policy Fellow based at the Leeds University Business School, who both have considerable experience of working across local government in the region. Topics discussed include how the group should work, what the most useful issues are to focus on, and how universities can support them.
Participants agreed on the value and appetite to develop the work of the Policy Officer Network to build relationships, collaborations, and shared understanding across the local and combined authority policy officer community of the Yorkshire and Humber region.
There was agreement that the network should focus on the more significant policy issues and broader trends at a local, regional, and national level, providing ‘headspace’ to explore opportunities to identify and implement systematic transformational change.
A key aim was to facilitate smarter working through sharing and agreeing priorities and explore how local and combined authorities might better engage with academics and access research. The challenge of navigating diverse local and combined government was signposted as important, as was engaging early career policy officers with academic researchers.
Key Outcomes:
Discussions about the importance of place as a key lens to focus activities for the network were had, particularly as a Yorkshire and Humber regional or mayoral combined authority scale is not always the most appropriate to consider policy issues. Merging research with context and circumstances of place is thus important, as is consideration for research and policy transfer and scaling.
Place was also seen as important to understand better the local and regional intelligence and data landscape.
The network also stressed a keenness to better connect local and combined authorities with bodies such as the National Institute for Health Research ‘Health Determinants Research Collaborations’ with those without to develop shared understanding of their place-based working approaches.
A presentation on the English Devolution White Paper, published in December 2024, was also provided by Y-PERN Policy Fellow, Neil Barnett (Leeds Beckett University), who outlined some of its challenges and opportunities. Subsequent discussions about devolution indicated that plans for local government reorganisation (outlined in the White Paper) would not impact on the region as there were now four combined authorities already in existence – which will now be called strategic authorities. Some concerns were expressed, however, about a potential ‘power drain’ if local government is increasingly seen by central government as a ‘delivery agent’ of combined authorities with little agency for local policy initiatives.
There was a shared desire to develop shared oversight and understanding of regional and sub-regional interactions with the UK government to build a collective Yorkshire Humber voice with the government and relevant departments and agencies. It was noted that the White Paper opens space for the regional policy communities to enhance joined-up and wider determinants policy work and collectively determine (and innovate) in shaping local and regional evaluation and outcomes frameworks, measuring and valuing things in ways which are reflective and sensitive local, place-based contexts and needs. Participants noted that better connect emergent Local Growth Plans across the region could be a valuable tool in this facilitating this work.
Ongoing work on local and combined authority Areas of Research Interest was identified as potentially significant in establishing policy-themed ‘communities of practice’ across the region to support collaboration, policy transfer and scaling.
Several participants noted however, that it was also important to open up spaces to consider how to strengthen community engagement, voice and agency in both widening and deepening devolution, and shaping evaluation and outcomes criteria. The potential role of YPIP in this work was identified as significant.
The meeting concluded with agreement that YHCPON should meet regularly, with future meetings focusing on issues such how to build ‘communities of practice’ linked to identified policy areas, the better circulation of information about research and policy, how can universities enhance engagement with non-university local authorities, and how can ‘best practice’ be transferred between local authorities and combined authorities.
Y-PERN recently presented a brief research note to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire on the challenges and opportunities presented for the region by the recently published UK Government English Devolution White Paper. The APPG brings MPs and Peers of all parties together with key leaders – those in local and combined authority government, public and private sectors and social enterprises – to help maximise future investment in the region for the benefit of all local communities and economies. Secretariat support for the APPG is provided The Public Affairs Company and North Star Public Affairs.
Y-PERN Policy Fellows, Dr Neil Barnett (Leeds Beckett University) and Dr Andy Mycock (University of Leeds) drew on recent research evidence from an ongoing devolution project which is being co-delivered with Yorkshire Universities and Yorkshire and Humber Councils.
The Research Note highlighted that the English Devolution White Paper draws attention to the challenge of aligning formal and informal levels of government and policymaking. There is a need to align existing strategies from local authorities alongside those outlined by the region’s combined authority local growth plans. There also needs to be wider strategy across the region. The White Paper also raised questions as to where local authorities fit amongst increased powers for combined authorities. The lack of funding for local authorities may increase tensions between these two levels of government.
Combined authorities also need to have the resources in order to carry out these new powers as well as implement plans from local authorities. It was noted that some government departments have not been involved as much as they should in the development of the Devolution White Paper, in particular DEFRA and DWP. Some policies from the previous Levelling Up agenda have also been moved to the peripheries. The Research Note also drew attention to the shift towards combined authorities on local democracy, particularly local councillors who may experience a power drain as local authorities become primarily delivery agents.
During his presentation of the Research Note to the APPG, Dr Andy Mycock stressed that there is a considerable role that the APPG can play in utilising their connections with government ministers and civil servants as well as connecting the Yorkshire and Humber voice and projecting it onto various levels of local and national government. He went on to argue there is a need to consider the opportunities presented in the White Paper, making sure that the success of devolution is set by local MPs, not the Government. He also noted that devolution will play a pivotal role in setting future policy agendas, and that the APPG has a role in both its deepening and widening as outlined in the White Paper.
Y-PERN and its partners will continue to support and collaborate the APPG in the new parliament, exploring opportunities to provide a strong, unified voice to drive economic growth across the region and are looking to work alongside our external members and to develop policy proposals that can be put to the Government that would support economic growth.
The Water Cultures Network was set up in 2023 As a joint initiative between Risky Cities, Living with Water (LWW) and the Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network (Y-PERN).
The aim of the Network is to build relationships to enable partnerships to work together and to be in place – in readiness to co-create bid applications, co-develop new ideas for projects, and engage in established projects using participatory, responsive, proactive, and needs-led approaches.
17th February’s event was the fourth Water Cultures network meeting, designed to involve the different projects working with communities related to living well with water in Hull and East Riding. Over forty people met (from policymakers, researchers, artists, and community organisations) at Oasis Hub in Hull to build connections, collaborate and learn.
During the meeting University of Hull academics and Living With Water – a partnership between Yorkshire Water, Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the Environment Agency and the University of Hull – led a presentation about the Flood Risk Awareness Centre, an exhibition in Hull’s city centre focussed on raising awareness about flooding to the community. Living With Water also led an interactive discussion and practical exercise about SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) using yoghurt pots.
“It has been great to experience how working together has helped to strengthen existing initiatives and create new opportunities that are needs-led, place-based and built over time and trust”.
-Juan Pablo Winter, Y-PERN Policy Fellow for Hull, East Yorkshire & the Humber
Other highlights from the event include a discussion led by representatives from Hull City Council on the Hull Green Space Strategy and presentations from community-based organisations Hull Food Partnership and Hull 4 Heroes.
The objective of the networks meetings are to showcase ongoing projects, then build connections and collaborations, maximise resources, add value and offer a connected approach to working with communities on living well with water. If you are interested in signing up for the mailing list or attending the next event (TBC) in Spring 2025, please contact J.Winter@hull.ac.uk
University of Hull’s First Hull Poverty Truth Commission Evaluation Report has now been published.
Written by Dr Gill Hughes and Y-PERN Policy Fellow Dr Juan Pablo Winter, the report discusses how the first Hull Poverty Truth Commission has inspired a major cultural shift to ensure that people who experience the impact of decisions should be part of the decision-making process.
The evaluation report shows how a ‘new business as usual’ is unfolding and speaks to the statement that the Poverty Truth Network (PTN) embraced:
You can also find out more about the story of the first Hull Poverty Truth Commission by viewing the University of Hull commissioned film “My pockets” here >
The film identifies the process as an ‘engine switch’ not a ‘paint job’ – this is about a participatory needs-led approach that shifts power through equitable trusting relationships to create transformative systems change.
The £800k ‘Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund’ will launch on 3 February 2025. This fund will be an opportunity for additional innovative emerging projects, studies, activities, and ideas that reflect the Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership’s (YPIP) focus on accelerating community-led inclusive and sustainable growth.
Y-PERN and YPIP are enhancing collaboration between university academics and policymakers in Yorkshire and the Humber to develop evidence-based policies that benefit local communities. With £4 million in funding, Y-PERN connects policymakers and academics through a network including 11 policy fellows and an academic steering group. YPIP has secured £5 million in funding to build on Y-PERN’s efforts, creating a Local Innovation Partnership that involves all Yorkshire universities and addresses inclusive growth, sustainable living, and data analytics, with a focus on marginalized communities.
Projects must align with one of the 5 YPIP themes:
Data informatics
Inclusive business practices
Creative industries
Sustainable living
Communities in their places.
Projects must bring together a collaboration of different stakeholders through meaningful community engagement. Proposals will be submitted via an online application form and assessed against 5 criteria by a decision panel which will include Co-directors, Co-Investigators and members of the community panel.
There will be two funding pathways to be inclusive of grassroot and larger scale community organisations to demonstrate their innovative ideas: seedcorn projects of up to £10k, and larger projects of up to £50k. The spending deadline for funded projects is expected to be autumn 2026.
Watch this space for further updates on the fund, and please do give a heads up to partners who are working across our themes in the region.
Do you have ideas about how to improve your community? Would you like to see better jobs in your area or find ways to live in a greener way?
The Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) project brings universities, communities, voluntary organisations, businesses and councils together to work on place-based initiatives.
Y-PERN and YPIP are enhancing collaboration between university academics and policymakers in Yorkshire and the Humber to develop evidence-based policies that benefit local communities. With £4 million in funding, Y-PERN connects policymakers and academics through a network including 11 policy fellows and an academic steering group. YPIP has secured £5 million in funding to build on Y-PERN’s efforts, creating a Local Innovation Partnership that involves all Yorkshire universities and addresses inclusive growth, sustainable living, and data analytics, with a focus on marginalized communities.
At the heart of the YPIP project is a community panel where we will listen, learn and make decisions together to shape local and regional policy. If this sounds interesting, we would love to hear from you.
The aim is to ensure that local people have an equal say in improving their communities and bringing better employment, sustainable living and inclusive growth to their areas.
The community panel is a group of 24 people from across Yorkshire and from all walks of life. It will make decisions about how the project runs and how we can improve our communities by agreeing on good practice examples of living and working sustainably in our communities.
Panel members will receive training and support with quarterly meetings throughout the project. They will be paid for their time with a living wage hourly fee and expenses will be reimbursed.
Find out more about the person and role specification, and express your interest in joining the panel by contacting Ben Jessop b.jessop@hull.ac.uk
Y-PERN is transforming the way academic researchers and knowledge exchange experts in the 12 Yorkshire and Humber universities work in partnership with policymakers in the region.
The deepening of devolution across our region presents a unique opportunity to co-create evidence based policies that bring real benefits to communities.
On Monday 8 July 2024 a unique gathering of policymakers and those with lived experience of poverty came together to reflect on a shared journey of change and celebrate progress made.
Across the UK, Poverty Truth Commissions (PTC) bring together two groups: people with lived experience struggling against poverty, who are known in the process as Community Commissioners; and people who are decision-makers or policymakers from civic or business life who are known in the process as Civic Commissioners.
In Hull, these groups came together over a period of 2 years to listen to each other’s experiences and build relationships. They met as humans, not job titles, and they shared their stories and agreed priorities for a local area with the aim of improving the lives of people in poverty.
Perhaps uniquely, the Hull PTC has been joined by two academic researchers, Dr Gill Hughes, Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull and Y-PERN Policy Fellow Dr Juan Pablo Winter, who have attempted to capture some of the learnings from the journey to take forward. They have drawn on methods including Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Transformative Participatory Evaluation (TPE). This aligns with the ethos of the Poverty Truth Commission and responds to a long-term relationship between the commissioners, facilitators and evaluators, based on trust, commitment, and mutual respect, valuing everyone’s unique perspectives and contributions.
The evaluation team commissioned My Pockets, a film production company and arts organisation based in East Yorkshire, to tell the story of the first Hull Poverty Truth Commission.
Community commissioners have experience of poverty, and civic commissioners are leaders in organisations within Hull and East Yorkshire, who have access to systems and services that can sometimes impact experiences of poverty. Together their voices narrate this film. Relationships and trust grew supported by facilitation from The Forum, Timebank and Groundwork, who were part of the consortium of the voluntary and community sector, which convened the commission.
The film was premiered at the Hull PTC ‘awakening’ event on the 8 July, and the team are proud to share that more widely now:
Y-PERN’s Chief Policy Fellow, Dr Andy Mycock reflects on the mayoral and local election results in Yorkshire and the Humber and what it could mean for Y-PERN and YPIP’s ongoing mission.
The local and combined authority elections held across the Yorkshire and Humber region in May 2024 provide some important insights into how the political and electoral ‘tectonic plates’ shifted. The overall voting patterns across Yorkshire and Humber were largely similar to those across the rest of England. Labour’s share of the overall vote (about 35%) was similar to last year. The local elections gave us some indication of the likely outcomes in a general election, but the Blackpool South by-election was likely a more insightful indication of where the country stands in terms of national party politics. Below are some headline thoughts on our region:
Mayoral Elections
The mayoral election in York and North Yorkshire (YNY) provided the headline result in the region, with David Skaith (Labour) beating Keane Duncan (Conservative) by almost 15,000 votes. Skaith’s campaign centred on local economic growth while not making any significant spending commitments.
One significant point of note was the turnout of 191,279 (just under 30%) – higher than many expected and a positive sign of initial recognition and buy-in from voters for the new combined authority (and in line with most previous initial mayoral elections in England).
Skaith will seek to hit the ground running and will welcome the proactive approaches to pre-election engagement by our Y-PERN universities in supporting the YNY Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA) transition team. Y-PERN will actively seek to develop existing relationships with YNY MCA officers and also the new mayor’s advisory team.
The other two mayoral contests went as many expected – with Tracy Brabin and Oliver Coppard both winning comfortably. Comparisons with previous elections in terms of party support are somewhat difficult due the change in voting system to ‘first past the post’. Brabin received just over 50% of the vote share, as did Coppard (50.9%). Both mayors and officers in the Combined Authorities in South and West Yorkshire will likely be concerned about the somewhat poor turnouts in relatively mature Combined Authorities. While South Yorkshire turnout increased marginally from 2022 (26.4%) to 27%, West Yorkshire’s turnout dropped from 36.5% to 32%, a surprise considering local elections were held across the region on the same day.
Key Takeaways
The victorious Labour mayoral candidates all showed restraint in the policy remit of their manifestoes, largely resisting the temptation to speak to policy areas beyond their current delegated powers. Moreover, the focus of all the mayoral candidate manifestoes spoke strongly to the shared work of predominant Y-PERN and YPIP areas of interest (climate/sustainability, local economic growth and skills, transport, arts and culture). Furthermore, the shared focus of Y-PERN and YPIP on enhancing the reach and resonance of community engagement could help support future voter engagement with the Combined Authorities and turnout in elections.
Local Elections
As expected, Labour also had healthy returns in many of the local council elections across the region. It is interesting to note that support was not however as sizeable in terms of vote share (35%) as the 1996 local elections (43%) which preceded the 1997 general election. This in parts reflects that Labour has been in power in many local authorities across the Yorkshire and Humber region for some time and some of the issues concerning finances and governmental competency are viewed by the electorate to reside at local as well as national level.
Overall, Labour-led councils strengthened their hold on power, but with some notable exceptions. All five local authorities in West Yorkshire remained Labour-led, but the party lost overall control in Kirklees; they remain the largest party there but new Kirklees Labour party group leader, Carole Pattison, will need to work with other political parties to address significant fiscal challenges facing the council. They also lost some councillors in Bradford. However, this should not impact too strongly on any forthcoming general election as voting switches have taken place in wards where Labour has very strong existing support.
In South Yorkshire, Sheffield City Council remains in no overall control (NOC), with Labour still leading the council as the largest party. Barnsley and Rotherham also saw Labour make modest gains. Notable across West and South Yorkshire was some growth in the Green and Lib Dem vote and councillors, and the relative success of Reform UK where they took votes from all the main parties (though they didn’t stand candidates in many seats).
In Hull, the Lib Dems fought off a strong Labour challenge to maintain control of the Council (Labour made a gain of one councillor). There were no elections in East Riding, but the other notable result was Labour taking the Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner post from the Conservatives (this has not been connected to the forthcoming mayoral role in Hull and East Riding MCA). The turnout was very low at 17%. There were no local elections in York and North Yorkshire.
Key Takeaways
The overarching messages is that the political landscape is both increasingly monochrome in one sense, as Labour is now in control of most local authorities across the region and the three mayoral roles. This will see some closer synchronisation of local and sub-regional policymaking in each of the three areas with a mayor. This noted, the political landscape remains complex and often influenced by a range of local, regional and national issues.
The Next Steps
Y-PERN and YPIP will continue to seek to support local and combined authorities across the region by listening and learning from our local and combined authority officer and elected representative colleagues. Our collective mission is to enhance cross-local and combined authority capacity and collaboration across the Yorkshire and Humber region. The emergence of the Policy Campus in Sheffield – which is part of a growing civil service footprint beyond Whitehall – is another significant opportunity for Y-PERN and YPIP to build multi-level policymaking capacity across the region.
Multi-level and cross-regional collaboration facilitated and supported by Y-PERN and YPIP will though need to adapt to the widening remit of our region’s Combined Authorities – particularly in the areas of local economic strategy and growth – as regional devolution deepens at a time of limited resources for some of local authorities. The forthcoming UK general election will also provide new challenges and opportunities for local and combined authorities, further highlighting the importance of collaboration with the region’s universities through Y-PERN and YPIP.
