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.
Universities UK (UUK) has published its Higher Education and Research Blueprint which sets out a package of reform, aiming to stabilise, mobilise and then maximise the contribution of UK universities to economic growth and widening opportunity for all.
It includes recommendations on how universities can do more to break down barriers to opportunity, help boost the economy, train the doctors and nurses of the future and support the drive to net zero. Achieving this, the blueprint says, will require the sector to change, becoming more efficient, collaborating more and transforming ways of working.
The Blueprint also calls on the UK government to stabilise the sector’s finances and increase direct public funding in England so the cost of going to university is rebalanced towards government instead of students.
Critical partners in local growth plans
One of three ‘key ideas’ in the report is for universities to work more closely in local areas with businesses, chambers of commerce and metro mayors to make the strongest possible contribution to growth at local and regional levels. Indeed, Chapter 3, ‘Generating local growth ‘notes that to maximise their contribution, universities need to be embedded as key partners with MCAs and local authorities, are well positioned to put themselves forward as critical partners in local growth plans,’ – citing Y-PERN as an example of this.
For example, South Yorkshire Combined Authority’s (SYMCA) Skills Strategy was devised to help build a better, not just a bigger economy in the region. Y-PERN colleagues were actively involved in supporting the development of the Skills Strategy for as well as a Plan for Good Growth. They delivered a range of activities including an evidence briefing on skills and labour market ecosystems and a series of workshops feeding into the Skills Strategy design
Meanwhile, the West Yorkshire Plan sets out an ambitious vision and five missions for 2040 that will transform lives and communities across the region. Y-PERN and West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) are working together on this vision through a systems of provision approach, which will ultimately feed into a Local Growth Plan (LGP) for the region. By analysing the underlying structures and relationships within a system, wider determinants of complex problems can be identified rather than merely addressing symptoms.
SYIP will provide opportunities for businesses to engage in and benefit from innovation-led growth, driving innovation led-activities. It will build upon a successful track record of delivering innovation support to SMEs in the region.
The programme is a collaboration led by Sheffield Hallam University with the University of Sheffield and Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council – all key Y-PERN partners.
SYIP will provide opportunities for businesses to engage in and benefit from innovation-led growth, driving innovation led activities. It will build upon a successful track record of delivering innovation support to SMEs in the region.
The programme will provide access to high-quality and bespoke innovation support including academic consultancy, innovation audits, student projects and placements, access to university equipment and facilities, events and technical workshops.
Support will be available to organisations of all sizes across all sectors based in South Yorkshire, including charities and social enterprises. Further details on the launch of the programme and how organisations can access support will follow later this year.
“It’s vital we bring together our world-leading universities and local authorities to help our local businesses harness innovation” – Oliver Coppard.
Partnerships to drive growth
The project is one of several partnerships between Sheffield’s universities, local authorities and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) aimed at driving economic growth and inward investment into South Yorkshire.
Others include:
The Sheffield Innovation Spine, a long-term spatial and economic strategy to create and link the infrastructure required to grow knowledge-led businesses
Innovation Network South Yorkshire which brings together academics, businesses and organisations at free networking events to encourage collaboration.
Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement & Research Network, which is transforming the way university academic experts and policymakers in work together (including those at Sheffield Hallam University, University of Sheffield and the local authorities of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield)
Harnessing technology and innovation
South Yorkshire’s Mayor, Oliver Coppard, said: “We are getting on with the job of building a bigger, better economy in South Yorkshire. But we can’t build a new future without new ideas.
“That’s why it’s vital we bring together our world-leading universities and local authorities to help our local businesses harness innovation. The South Yorkshire Innovation Programme will help our businesses to create the future here, right here.
“I’m determined to build a South Yorkshire that works together to spread wealth, opportunity and success to all our communities.”
Professor Rory Duncan, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange at Sheffield Hallam University, said: “At a time of rapid advancements across an ever-increasing range of sectors, the ability to innovate and harness new technology is more important than ever for businesses of all sizes.
“Sheffield Hallam is delighted to be leading this new programme fostering stronger partnerships between academia and business. This collaboration aims to translate cutting-edge research and knowledge into tangible solutions that address the unique challenges of our region’s businesses.”
Professor Ashutosh Tiwari, Deputy Vice-President for Innovation at the University of Sheffield, said: “The University of Sheffield has a proven track record of partnering with local organisations to drive innovation and boost economic growth. This collaborative programme offers an exciting opportunity to build on our successes.
“We’re very much looking forward to working closely with some of South Yorkshire’s innovative organisations to help them adapt and thrive as the challenges they face continue to evolve. Together, we can turn our world-leading research into practical solutions to address the region’s specific needs, while strengthening South Yorkshire’s position as a hub for innovation.”
Tackling productivity challenges
Cllr Robin Franklin, Cabinet Spokesperson for Regeneration and Culture at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, said: “This is a fantastic programme for businesses who are looking to innovate and increase productivity by accessing technologies and dedicated one to one support. Our Enterprising Barnsley team will lead the technical expertise though the innovation spaces at the DMC, bringing value through our wide-reaching network of specialists.
“We’ve already seen businesses making the most of the MakerLab and CreatorLab to diversify their business offer, develop new products, and tackle productivity challenges. Now we have a programme which opens that opportunity for even more businesses, whilst bringing three new jobs into the Enterprising Barnsley team to drive further innovation into the region.
“We’ll be hosting a number of workshops and events to welcome business to the spaces, encouraging those who typically haven’t engaged with modern technologies such as 3D scanning and printing, Internet of Things devices, and laser cutters, to come and explore what is available to them at the DMC in Barnsley.”
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.
Elizabeth Sanderson and Dr Jamie Redman are joint Policy Fellows for South Yorkshire, responsible for connecting academic research and policymaking in the sub-region.
As the Y-PERN Policy Fellows for South Yorkshire, Elizabeth and Jamie are responsible for…
Connecting academic research and policymaking in South Yorkshire. Specifically, Elizabeth and Jamie are responsible for developing relationships between the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and the academic community. This includes providing evidence to support SYMCA priorities and offering critical challenge.
Elizabeth and Jamie are most looking forward to…
Deepening the relationship between SYMCA and Sheffield’s two universities by working together to create a programme of joint institutional activities. In particular, they are looking forward to running a series of monthly policy forums where academics and policymakers can come together to discuss ideas and policy priorities.
Key areas of focus for Elizabeth and Jamie are…
Elizabeth and Jamie have been actively involved in supporting the development of SYMCA’s current Skills Strategy and Plan for Growth.
This work has involved providing SYMCA with rapid evidence reviews, briefing on skills and labour market ecosystems and the support available for inactive populations in South Yorkshire, and contributing to policy workshops. Work will continue on deepening SYMCA knowledge around skills and growth, using multiple methods including rapid reviews and data analysis. As the Skills Strategy and Plan for Growth move towards publication, support is likely to turn to considerations around monitoring and evaluation.
Coproduced policy forums will commence in February 2024 and continue throughout the year. Further events are also being planned, including external facing activities.
Elizabeth joins us with a background in..
Policy research and evaluation. Elizabeth has over a decade of applied research experience and has worked across a variety of projects for numerous clients including voluntary and community sector organisations, councils, and government organisations. She has considerable experience in project and programme evaluation and the development of monitoring and data collection systems and tools. A significant proportion of the projects Elizabeth has worked on have been in the areas of welfare, labour markets and employment.
Jamie joins us with a background in..
Sociology and social policy. Jamie has undertaken several applied research projects, which include evaluations of health-focused employment services, new social housing solutions and homelessness and rough sleeping interventions. His research interests converge around welfare reform, employment services, labour markets, poverty and unemployment.
Dr Dan Olner is Y-PERN Policy Fellow for South Yorkshire, helping to foster relationships between the combined mayoral authority and academics, with particular research interests in spatial economics.
Originally published on 13 August 2023 at DanOlner.net
Y-PERN (“Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network”) is a pretty unique project – Research England funded it specifically to strengthen the glue between Yorkshire and Humber’s universities and its local and mayoral authorities, building on a memorandum of understanding between them. The project itself doesn’t have traditional academic research questions or output requirements; the glue-strengthening is the whole point.
I’m one of eight (soon to be 11) policy fellows, and we’re kind of the glue, embedded in various local government bodies in Yorkshire and Humber. 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 – I’m feeling blessed to have a chance to work with them.
I’ve actually been in Y-PERN / SYMCA for several months, but only part time as I prototyped my way to a new work outcome, mixed with a few other freelance data science bits and bobs. But now that I’m fully Y-PERN, and getting stuck into some intense spatial economics goodness, it’ll be great to write/think about it all.
English Devolution (which will soon cover more than half of the English economy) is kindling a resurgence in fundamental economic and social questions, grounded in the places we live, asking how we can change those places for the better. To quote SYMCA’s Strategic Economic Plan (PDF):
We want to build a better economy, higher value and higher tech, more directly linked to the wellbeing of our population and planet, where people are more engaged and empowered to share in the fruits of their labour.
SYMCA Strategic Economic Plan
There’s some amazing work being done on how data can be used to support this, and gnarly issues around how evidence gets built into the machinery of governance. Work on inclusive economies has shown (LGA report) there’s no clear connection between raw GVA growth and disposable income growth. Others in, for example, the SIPHER project and Manchester’s inclusive growth analysis unit are asking exactly what role data and evidence can play in attacking spatial inequality(see this great spreadsheet put together by SIPHER that gathers several organisation’s inclusive economy measures into one place). This includes work with communities to create indicators that make sense to them, rather than simply imposing ones institutions prefer to work with (though there is of course still a need to use existing, robust national data sources).
Continuing the inclusive economies theme, there’s a recognition of the deep connection between all the economic and spatial determinants of health written into South Yorkshire’s Integrated Care Partnership health strategy, including the role of housing, employment and access to transport. That’s supported by a mature national data system – fingertips – that is not as well known as it should be, maybe due to its health focus. Because it covers “wider determinants”, it actually contains a huge swathe of the all the best social and economic data, with excellent APIs and R/Python packages, and is the foundation for this epic piece of analysis (word doc download) that supports South Yorkshire’s health strategy.
The image below is a summary of work done to understand what underpins the alleged “Glasgow effect”, from a presentation (second from the bottom on that page) by Dr. David Walsh of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. I find it a really effective reminder not only the complexity of the economics/health connection, but also the vital importance of understanding a place’s history. Different kinds of data can act as individual lenses, with their own distortions and blind spots – but data alone isn’t insight. We have to piece that together from as many knowledge sources as we can, including learning how past events led us to where we are.
The same is true for understanding how spatial economics underpins thriving (or struggling) places. As I tried to get across in our energy policy paper, there’s still a lot we don’t fully understand about how the wiring of spatial economies work – again, with data and theory giving only partial glimpses of the reality – and yet the issues we face are as intense as they’ve ever been, with a cost of living crisis and pandemic recovery piled on top of trying to figure out how to rewire spatial economies for zero carbon. Definitive answers are unlikely to be imminent; that paper stole an old Zapatista saying: we have to ‘walk asking‘.
So we need things to ask while we walk, and one of my favourite ways to find fresh questions has always been… old books. They’re full of the best questions – it’s just that they tend to drop out of fashion rather than ever be resolved. Everything circles round. I was reminded of this after my first visit to the incredible, labyrinthine Scarthin Books in Cromford recently. The shop left me no choice but to buy a bunch of old economics books… In Peter Donaldson’s populariser, ‘a Guide to the British Economy’ (1971), he notes that faith in nineteenth century laissez-faire economics was shattered in the 1930s depression, before saying:
Economics today is more interesting than ever before, because we now realise that the economy is neither an automatic mechanism which can safely be left to chug smoothly along its own optimal path, nor governed by blind and unpredictable forces over which we can have no control. Its proper behaviour can only be secured by deliberate manipulation, and developments in economic theory have indicated some of the basic techniques necessary for this purpose.
‘A Guide to the British Economy’, Peter Donaldson
Of course, things took a rather different course later in the 70s… but we find ourselves asking the same questions again. What level of control do we have? What levers do we have? Can we make new levers regionally, locally? How? What role can and do data and evidence play in all this? Questions of some practical importance as well as theoretical intrigue, but in the meantime, there’s some actual nuts and bolts spatial economic data analysis to be done – hopefully I can write about that in more detail soon.
And more ramblings to come about the questions. This post looks at some of those ideas that Donaldson thought had died, resurfacing in the 70s and still swirling about in odd places, if of interest – note how it connects to evidence-based decision making (all the stuff about ‘planners promising utopias’).
Oh and p.s. – check out Alfred Marshall’s excellent list of questions for economics from 1895; how many of those have been resolved versus just gone out of fashion?
Dr Andy Mycock is Y-PERN Chief Policy Fellow, providing overall strategic leadership of the programme and coordination of the team of Y-PERN policy fellows across the region.
As Chief Policy Fellow, Andy is part of the Y-PERN directorate providing overall strategic leadership of the programme, working closely with the Senior Programme Manager, Kayleigh Renberg-Fawcett. Andy leads on the coordination of the team of Y-PERN policy fellows across the region, and the delivery and evaluation of the four programme Work Packages. He has responsibility for delivering Work Package 3 which focuses on policy engagement training, dissemination, and community engagement. Andy is the key contact point for engagement and networking with academic and policy communities across Yorkshire and the UK more widely, and dissemination of Y-PERN outputs.
Andy Mycock
Chief Policy Fellow of the Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network
A political scientist with extensive experience of research-led academic policy engagement, Andy collaborates with a wide range of government and non-government stakeholders across the UK and internationally. Andy sits on the executive committee of the University Policy Engagement Network and is an elected trustee of the Political Studies Association. He was invited to sit on the UK Government Youth Citizenship Commission (2008-9) and chaired the Kirklees Democracy Commission (2016-2018) and have frequently advised UK and devolved governments on youth citizenship policies. Andy is an academic member on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Political Literacy and has submitted a wide range of evidence to UK and devolved parliamentary select committees. He contribute regularly to BBC local and national media, and a range of print and broadcast media across the UK and internationally.
Andy was President of the Children’s Identities and Citizenship in Europe Association (CiCea) network (2020-22) and sit on the executive committee of the Erasmus+ funded Citizenship Education in the Context of European Values project (2020-24). He is also a trustee of Youth Focus North West, a leading regional youth work body, and have worked closely with local, regional, and national policymakers in designing and implementing youth representation bodies such as the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority.
Andy’s PhD, studied at the University of Salford, was a comparative study of the legacies of empire in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation, with a focus on issues of identity, citizenship, and government. Before moving to the University of Leeds, Andy held academic positions at the University of Salford, University of Manchester, and most recently the University of Huddersfield, where he was Reader in Politics and a Director of External Engagement with responsibility for policy engagement.
