Mapping Strategic Priorities of Local and Combined Authorities in Yorkshire 

Claire Smithson & Paul Hayes 

A key challenge for academic policy engagement lies in how to effectively prioritise and coordinate the demand and supply of research and expertise. Currently much of the work being done in this area tends to be either bespoke or through existing relationships, which can create inconsistencies across organisations, their departments and universities.  

Whilst the UK government has taken steps to address these gaps through the creation of calls for evidence or “Areas of Research Interest” (ARIs), which have been adopted by some local levels, such as the local ARIs established by the University of Leeds and Leeds City Council, there is still little in the way of formal mechanisms for academic policy engagement at the Local or Combined Authority levels in England. 

Local and Combined Authority officers often grapple with competing priorities, limited resources, and time constraints, all while striving to meet their overarching strategic goals. These goals frequently align across authorities due to shared civic responsibilities and the common place-based challenges they face. However, engagement routes between researchers and councils can often be unclear. Researchers, nonetheless, have significant opportunities to support councils’ policy and decision-making processes. This support can take various forms, including research collaborations, participation in expert groups, contributions to policy forums or scrutiny boards, the sharing of relevant research, and undertaking placements or secondments. By harnessing these engagement pathways, researchers can bridge the gap between academic insights and practical policymaking. 

As part of Y-PERN’s ongoing efforts to engage with Local and Combined Authorities across Yorkshire and Humber, we conducted a mapping exercise to identify priorities from key strategic documents of all Combined and Local Authorities, such as the West Yorkshire Plan (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) or Barnsley 2030 (Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council). The findings from this exercise have helped provide a clear strategic focus for Y-PERN and other research networks, streamlining the process and connecting networks together that can directly provide support and evidence that is both relevant and impactful.  

This project has also been welcomed by combined and local authority partners, supporting them in identifying priorities and challenges across the region, and will act as a catalyst for cross authority idea sharing and collaboration, including the planned establishment of a joint local government academic policy network for the region. The mapping exercise clearly demonstrated that the core objectives of Local and Combined Authorities align closely with their peers, with key themes consistently reflected across the region. However, subtle differences in their priorities and approaches highlight the unique roles each authority plays within the broader governance structure, as well as some differing local and subregional challenges and priorities, including political priorities. 

Economic growth is a primary focus for both Local and Combined authorities, with a shared ambition to foster more inclusive economies. Local authorities tend to be more rooted in community engagement and development, tailoring their strategies to the specific needs of their local areas. Combined authorities, on the other hand, adopt a more strategic, sub region-wide perspective, often aligning their efforts with sub-regional economic ambitions. This reflects the wider service delivery and place responsibilities of local councils, as opposed to the more overview and investment role of combined authorities, as well as the public transport responsibilities of CA’s 

In addition to this, environmental sustainability has emerged as a critical priority for all authorities. Local authorities again, often take a community-level and hyper-local approach, emphasising mitigation efforts like reducing local emissions, increasing resilience to climate change, and adapting infrastructure to meet sustainability targets. In contrast, combined authorities are typically utilising environmental challenges as an opportunity to drive economic growth, with a focus on green infrastructure investment and creating new jobs in emerging sectors such as renewable energy and sustainable technologies. 

Transport is another sector where distinctions between the authorities become apparent. Combined authorities, with their devolved powers and larger geographic remit, are positioned to lead on significant transport infrastructure projects designed to enhance regional connectivity, addressing issues such as inter-city links and improving public transport networks across wide areas.  

By comparison, local authorities concentrate on more immediate and localised transport needs, such as highways maintenance and the promotion of local modal shift, ensuring that their transport solutions meet the day-to-day requirements of their residents. 

Social care and children’s services remain fundamental responsibilities for local authorities, these services are central to local authorities’ civic duties as well as making up the majority of their day-to-day spending), shaping their research and policy development. Combined authorities are less involved in these areas, as their focus is more aligned with overarching economic and infrastructure initiatives. 

Finally, both local and combined authorities recognise the importance of ‘place’ in shaping their strategic priorities, but the interpretation of this concept differs. Local authorities focus on creating place-based initiatives that reflect the unique needs and characteristics of their communities. This may involve community regeneration, improving local services, or enhancing public spaces. Combined authorities, however, are more likely to concentrate on regional development, viewing ‘place’ through the lens of economic connectivity and cohesion, working to strengthen ties between localities to ensure the entire region benefits from growth and development. 

This mapping exercise provides a start to addressing gaps in academic policy engagement infrastructure, providing insights into the shared priorities of local and combined authorities across the Yorkshire and Humber regions. By emphasising key focus areas such as economic growth, inclusive economies, environmental sustainability, and transport, strategic research and policy efforts can be better aligned with regional needs. The exercise will play a key role in developing groundbreaking work led by Y-PERN and colleagues across partner universities who are working in collaboration with local and combined authorities to create an integrated local and regional Areas of Research Interest framework across the whole of the region.  

When engaging with the overarching priorities of local and combined authorities, it is essential for academics to thoroughly review and understand these priorities while adopting the councils’ own language to ensure alignment with regional objectives. Establishing strong, reciprocal relationships based on shared understanding and the co-creation of projects that reflect mutual interests can pave the way for meaningful and sustained academic-policy collaborations. 

Claire Smithson is Policy Engagement Officer, at Policy Leeds. Drawing on her experience across both academia and the policy charity sector, Claire brings a nuanced understanding of the intersection between research and public policy to ensure that academic research informs and shape policy development at a local, regional and national level.

Paul Hayes is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Leeds University Business School. Paul was previously a Policy Manager at Wakefield Council. He has worked extensively with government, think tanks and academics around issues relating to regional and local government, public services, and local economies and economic inclusion.

Meet the members of the YPIP team

YPIP in white font with blue background

Meet the YPIP Team and the Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund

The core YPIP team are now all in post and working together to drive forward the project with partners across the region:

  • Holly Ingram is the YPIP Project Manager. Holly has a background in modern languages and has worked in a range of Higher Education project roles over the last 5 years including digital education, intercultural opportunities and research culture – h.l.ingram@leeds.ac.uk
  • Lizzie Bonsor is the YPIP Administrator. She has worked in a range of refugee-facing organisations over the last five years both within Leeds and further afield, including charities, community interest companies and community organisations – e.a.bonsor@leeds.ac.uk
  • Lauren Cox is the YPIP Communications and Engagement Manager. Lauren has worked with the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector across Luton and Bedfordshire for the last 5 and a half years in roles with the local authority and a criminal justice charity – l.a.cox@leeds.ac.uk
The YPIP team: Lizzie Bonsor (top left), Lauren Cox (top right), Holly Ingram (bottom)

YPIP and Y-PERN are currently working on aligning their online presence and creating a website that will host both initiatives.

One of the key pieces of upcoming work is the ‘Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund’ which will launch in early 2025.

This fund will be used on emerging projects, studies, activities, and ideas that reflect YPIP’s focus on accelerating community-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Projects must bring together a collaboration of different stakeholders through meaningful community engagement. There will be two funding pathways to be inclusive of grassroot and larger scale community organisations to demonstrate their innovative ideas.

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. Contact the team at ypip@leeds.ac.uk

Manufacturing SMEs: A Yorkshire & Humber policy picture

View over Calderdale Valley

Dr Peter Mukarumbwa, Y-PERN Policy Fellow, University of Bradford

The manufacturing sector represents a significant part of the UK economy employing 2.6 million workers, who collectively generated an estimated £184 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during 2022.

Manufacturing companies consequently contributed 8% of GDP and 7% of employment in 2022. The sector also is an important source of high wage jobs in the UK, thanks to it being a relatively high productivity sector in the country; the median manufacturing wage is 11% higher than the average UK equivalent.

Manufacturing is equally a crucial sector for the Yorkshire and Humber region. For example, West Yorkshire employs more than 115,000 people in manufacturing, making it the third largest sector and the highest in the north of England, and some districts, such as Kirklees have strong concentrations of manufacturing jobs (16% of total employment compared to the 8% UK average).

Despite this potential, businesses in the Yorkshire and Humber region have faced well documented, long term persistent challenges such as low productivity and business rates, low Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita, and a low proportion of high growth and scale-up businesses. In fact, 87% of stakeholders in the UK’s manufacturing sector agree that there is inadequate government support for the sector.  

Despite longstanding and repeated work seeking to identify challenges and opportunities for Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) manufacturers, this rarely has impacted on policy and there is a perception that the SME manufacturing economy across Yorkshire and the Humber has been neglected by short-term, political priorities.  

With this in mind, we undertook research exploring challenges and opportunities for SME manufacturers in the region with the aim of providing a definitive position on the support needed for SME manufacturers in the Yorkshire and Humber region. The overarching goal was to provide policy makers with a clear roadmap for SME manufacturers. This follows a call from the Calderdale and Kirklees Manufacturing Alliance (CKMA), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and other project partners. With a new national government, now is a good time to review evidence and provide a definitive set of research informed recommendations for national, regional, and local policy makers with specific focus on the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA).

The evidence reported here is based on a content analysis of the existing data and reports available related to SME manufacturers, drawing on both published reports and publicly available databases. The selection criteria included evidence published in the last 4 years (2020-2024), limited to the United Kingdom (UK), England and with an emphasis on the Yorkshire and Humber region. The analysis addressed the nature of the evidence provided, insights gained, the identified challenges and opportunities for the sector and sought to synthesize the recommendations for policy and practice provided in these reports and articles. Ultimately, it is hoped that this work will link into the West Yorkshire system review and economic strategy.

What are the issues?

Whilst several themes emerged across this period, the most consistent SME manufacturer challenges identified are skilled labour shortage, followed by access to finance, the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), and net zero.

Recruitment and retention of staff with the right skills set is a major issue for businesses across the Yorkshire and Humber region. More worrisome however, is the fact that many organisations do not have a skills plan and do not see the benefits of having one. This negatively impact prospects of addressing workforce challenges effectively in the future.

Credit availability and affordability continue to haunt most SMEs across different sectors and specifically those in manufacturing as the UK economy officially entered a technical recession in Q4 of 2023. This situation is further compounded by the fact that small firms in the Yorkshire and Humber region struggle more than other regions to access affordable finance. Furthermore, a key theme that emerged from these initial insights was that SMEs lack awareness of different financial options available to them.

SMEs in the manufacturing sector are strategically positioned to reap enormous benefits from business opportunities emanating from use of AI. Nonetheless, majority of SMEs are concerned that AI might negatively impact their businesses. For instance, in West and North Yorkshire 25% of firms were concerned about the impact of AI on their business during Q4 2023.

It is interesting to note that across the Yorkshire and Humber region, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) and net zero considerations are in their infancy amongst SMEs, with many not understanding the meaning behind them and how such considerations could bring new business opportunities. As a result, SMEs view these as a costly burden both in terms of finances and personal time, rather than as a source of opportunities.

Proposed way forward for policy makers and key stakeholders

The challenges described above require innovative approaches to SME manufacturing engagement and working with a diverse range of governmental, non-governmental, and community partners. The evidence collated indicates that there is a potential need to review the apprenticeship system and the education system at large to ensure that training meets the current and future needs of SME manufacturing businesses. This will help to alleviate the skilled labour shortage.

Awareness raising and education to strengthen the SME financial ecosystem by government and other public sector bodies that represent SMEs is likely to improve their access to finance. Most importantly, financial institutions working closely with other key stakeholders must offer a range of financing offers targeted at different stages of firm growth.

There is a need to develop digital skills diagnostics and technological adoption tools to provide advice, signpost SMEs and make assessment of current and future digital skills, needs and training. Most importantly, SMEs should be educated about the benefits of adopting technological tools and AI. It is expected that this will make SMEs in manufacturing sector more aware of the potential benefits that accrue from AI, data science and analytics.

Finally, the benefits of small firms adopting sustainable business practice models must be clearly spelt out. The WYCA must provide clear policy guidance and regulations on Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) and net zero for SMEs particularly those in manufacturing sectors.

Dr Peter Mukarumbwa is the Y-PERN Policy Fellow at the University of Bradford. Peter joins us with a background in regional economic policy. He has worked for the UN, governments and universities across five countries in Southern Africa.

Photo by David Pickup 🇬🇧


Evaluating City of York Council’s Universal Free School Meals

Picture of three lunch boxes contents. Sandwiches and fruit inside.

Dr Rebecca Kerr, Y-PERN Policy Fellow, University of York

Food for thought? It seems so

Y-PERN colleagues, along with researchers from TYPE, collaborated with colleagues from the University of Leeds and the City of York Council (CYC) to evaluate the Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) pilot in York city. The pilot, launched in January 2024 as the York Hungry Minds appeal provides universal free lunches at one school and universal free breakfasts at another. This scheme was developed in response to concerns about the impact of cost-of-living pressures, with some neighbourhoods in York ranked among the 20% most deprived areas in the UK. Many families are struggling financially, and children can arrive at school hungry.

The pilot had key target policy outcomes, which included reducing the stigma attached for receiving free school meals (FSM), ensuring that children currently excluded from the national FSMs would be included and broadly, to reach all children living in poverty. The scheme also sought to improve educational outcomes, enhance children’s health, create local jobs, and promote community wealth. Additionally, the CYC hoped that the UFSM scheme would align with the Council’s four core commitments to health, the environment, affordability, and human rights and equalities.

The evaluation combined qualitative and quantitative approaches. Researchers from the University of York led the qualitative analysis, drawing on interviews with school staff and parents from the pilot schools, while the University of Leeds team conducted quantitative analysis. Together, the analysis explored the scheme’s impact on key outcomes and provided insights into the broader challenges of implementing UFSM policies.

The core findings of the qualitative research are as follows:

Affordability:

Families have been placed under financial strain due to rising insecurity and the cost-of-living crisis. Staff report that pupils could arrive at school hungry and lack adequate pack-ups. Parents reflected that the UFSM alleviated some financial pressures enabling families to reorganise their family budgets.

Equalities:

Universalism a core principle of the UFSM pilot, aiming to eliminate stigma that may be associated with receiving FSM and to stop pupils from feeling different to their peers. Interviewees also note that universalism was also to remove the stigma of means testing to access FSM. Interviewees highlighted that universalism also removed the stigma tied to means-testing for FSM access. However, limiting the pilot to schools in the city’s most deprived wards risked inadvertently reinforcing stigma, as the program’s association with these areas might mark it as targeted rather than universal. Expanding the pilot city-wide could help address this issue. Additionally, the pilot’s funding model, described as resembling a “charity model”, was noted as another potential source of stigma.

Outcomes:

Staff observed improvements in pupils’ school readiness, noting better punctuality, attendance, and overall wellbeing. Enhanced readiness to learn was also reported, with staff at both schools highlighting improvements in cognitive functioning and educational outcomes. Parents shared that their children were happier to attend school in the mornings due to the breakfast provision. They also expressed that the pilot reduced time pressures in the morning and simplified the planning of school lunches, contributing to a smoother routine.

Health:

Parents noted that their children enjoyed a variety of healthy meals and appreciated being informed in advance about meal selections. Some parents mentioned that their children were willing to try new foods at school, broadening their dietary habits. School staff observed that spending time with pupils in the dining hall provided an opportunity for one-on-one interactions in a safe, informal setting, allowing for more holistic support outside the usual classroom environment.

Although the scheme is still in its early stages, there are some indications of improved physical health among pupils. More notably, there are strong signs of enhanced wellbeing, happiness, and mental health, evidenced by pupils’ increased engagement and positive play during break times.

Environment:

Most pupils generally finish their meals, though some food waste occurs, particularly with vegetables. This suggests a need for greater consideration of what children are more likely to eat. Catering staff may be well-positioned to provide insights and recommendations for meal adjustments to better align with pupils’ preferences while maintaining nutritional value.

Implementation:

As part of the evaluation, we also examined the practical aspects of implementing the scheme, especially in light of the Council’s plans to extend the pilot to other schools in the area. A key insight was the significant amount of time required for effective implementation. This includes considerations around the allocation of staff time needed to manage and sustain such a programme, as well as ensuring that school facilities are adequately prepared to support the initiative. With additional time for implementation, schools could more effectively manage communication with parents and guardians, addressing a key challenge identified during the pilot.

Further evaluative work will build on the collaboration between colleagues at the University of York and the University of Leeds to align research findings more comprehensively. Additional quantitative analysis is expected to provide deeper insights into pupil attendance and punctuality, while further qualitative research with pupils will centre on their experiences of receiving UFSMs.

Following initial research, the CYC plans to extend the UFSM programme to more schools across the city.

See the interim report here

Dr Rebecca Kerr is a Y-PERN Policy Fellow at the University of York, hosted within The York Policy Engine (TYPE).

Photo by Antoni Shkraba

Universities collaborating for the good of our regions is fast becoming a policy imperative

Y-PERN’s Policy Director Dr Peter O’Brien and Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher explore the kinds of value that are created when higher education institutions work together regionally.

Keir Starmer’s new Labour government is committed to delivering five key missions: growth; NHS reform; clean energy; safer streets; and opportunity for all. Underpinning this approach is a shift towards a more active, smarter state that works in partnership with business, trade unions, local leaders, and devolved governments, guided by a new industrial strategy that seeks equitable economic growth across the country.

A sub-national architecture of devolution is taking root in England as a model of civic leadership, led by mayors and mayoral combined authorities. An English Devolution Bill is also set to drive further effective regional development by giving mayoral combined authorities and local authorities greater capacity and resources to set out ambitious growth agendas for the regions and to pull the necessary levers to achieve those ambitions.

In London, the capital’s devolved infrastructure goes back 25 years, while in Yorkshire, by June 2025, there will be four mayoral combined authorities with elected mayors covering Hull and East Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. Devolution is always an unfinished story; as devolved administrations mature, they build capacity to take on more responsibility and accomplish more.

There are significant opportunities for higher education institutions in Labour’s adoption of a place-based, partnership-led approach, bringing in skills, research and innovation, educational opportunity, public sector productivity, and effective policymaking at the regional level. But it will also test the capability of universities to forge and sustain meaningful regional collaborations with each other and with regional policymakers and industry.

Our combined experience of working in regional university networks shows the power and impact that networked collaboration among higher education institutions can have, but as a sector we need to collectively buy into the idea that collaboration for the good of our regions is not an optional nice-to-have, but a core part of the higher education mission.

Strength in diversity

Policymakers and their teams have lots of stakeholders and priorities, and limited bandwidth. Regional groupings of universities offer the golden opportunity for efficiency in connecting up policymaking to expert insight and research, without the need to go from institution to institution.

One of the real strengths a regional network can offer is access to diversity of institutional knowledge; with research-intensive, modern and specialist universities involved in both our networks, our collective views are nuanced and our access to insight very broad indeed, meaning we can broker expertise across a wide range of local priorities.

This capability is seen at its most powerful through strategic engagement with regional policymakers. London, for example, has a plethora of boards and policy initiatives such as the London Partnership Board, which brings together representatives of key institutions across the capital including business, health, local government, and further education to build London’s capability to tackle future challenges.

In Yorkshire, a ground-breaking memorandum of understanding between Yorkshire Universities and Yorkshire and Humber Councils provides a framework for a long-term strategic partnership between local government and higher education in the region. The Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement & Research Network (Y-PERN) facilitates inclusive and place-based academic policy engagement, while the Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership (Y-PIP) is expanding the range of research activity co-designed and co-delivered between the region’s universities, policymakers, local communities and businesses to help drive positive, practical change within and across Yorkshire.

It’s worth adding that the London Higher and Yorkshire Universities staff are accustomed to working with policymakers, skilled in generating ideas and connections, and knowledgeable about the policy landscape – that doesn’t mean that individual institutions don’t need those capabilities to some degree, but having a shared hub of expertise has a helpful amplification effect and can be a space for capacity building on the development, monitoring and evaluation of policy and its impacts.

Regional growth

The dual role of universities in educating a highly skilled workforce and driving innovation and knowledge exchange through research means that they are critical delivery partners in regional economic growth agendas. Regional networks can play a role not only in forging collaborations between universities, but in connecting the sector to business and local communities.

Each of our organisations has a clear – though slightly different – theory of how our member higher education institutions collectively contribute to economic growth, including through tackling specific productivity challenges, investment in infrastructure, improving business leadership and management, educating future entrepreneurs, and through cultural and civic engagement – and we’re always ready with the examples to back up those arguments. Our analysis is rooted in a whole-region context for innovation activity, giving us a view of the larger ecosystem in which our universities are operating and the various assets that are available across our networks.

On a practical level, regional university groups can use their convening power to deliver major changes. In Yorkshire and the Humber a legacy of high-carbon emitting industry, threats from flooding, and a series of energy transitions that have affected communities inequitably across the region have generated a consensus on a need not only for decarbonisation, but a green energy agenda infused with social justice. The Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission, the largest place-based climate commission in the UK acts as a vehicle to mobilise Yorkshire’s universities’ combined research and policy expertise to tackle climate, sustainability and environmental challenges.

Expanding opportunity

Individual institutions have their own widening participation missions and priorities for access, but through collaboration we can expand our collective reach to prospective students and create a much more navigable higher education opportunity landscape for learners. London Higher’s Access HE division is long-established, and is able to create opportunities for targeted programmes of outreach activity to priority groups such as care leavers, and engage in collective advocacy on widening participation funding.

London Higher’s recent acquisition, redesign and relaunch of the Study London campaign is equally helping to drive international education exports to both the capital and nation by bringing together London’s higher education sector under one powerful brand to drive growth and opportunities, and maintain London’s competitive advantage on the global stage.

As in other parts of the country, universities in London and Yorkshire have much to contribute to interventions and investments that match needs of their localities. While London’s universities have deep local roots, a large number of the capital’s institutions are inherently global, with the ability to leverage international connections to attract and retain major foreign direct investment. However, the funding and talent that arrives in London does not only benefit the London region but generates wider impacts right across the country.

Similarly, Yorkshire’s universities have global connections that transcend regional boundaries. In the case of Sheffield Hallam and York St John, some institutions are also forging a physical presence in the capital, making them key players in creating, nurturing and retaining talent and driving international trade and investment. The powerful reputations of London’s and Yorkshire’s universities are therefore vital to delivering on national and sub-national growth agendas.

Wherever the region, and whatever its strengths, regional university groups are going to be key under this government in delivering the devolution deals each part of the country needs.

The article was originally published in Wonkhe, the home of the UK higher education debate

Y-PERN Briefing Note: What can we learn from the international evidence on devolution? 

In this briefing, Dr Neil Barnett (Y-PERN Policy Fellow for Yorkshire & Humber Councils) takes a broad look at the international trend towards devolving powers to regions and the evidence for its overall benefit.

In recent decades, there has been an international trend towards devolving powers or duties to sub-national tiers of government as best practice, promoted by a range of bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, and OECD, the EU, and influential think tanks.

The review of evidence reveals a number of key themes which shape current understanding of devolution to regional and sub-regional bodies. These include whether it ‘works’, what are its diverse effects, how we can capture and understand its beneficial outcomes (both in economic terms and the well-being of citizens), and does it enhance democracy?  

Our review indicates that the evidence reviewed is contradictory, and is based on differing methodological approaches and focus. This means a definitive answer to each of the questions above is not possible, with a more concise answer being – ‘it depends’. The evidence is often circumstantial, meaning it is difficult to establish a firm relationship between any particular scale of governance and outcomes.

Assessing the effects of devolution is thus dependant on a series of questions, including: what form does it take? where and when is it taking place and why? and who is involved and how do they interact? 

Treating international ‘lessons’ with caution 

(1) What is studied differs; sometimes it is regions and sub-regions, which can cover widely differing geographical sizes and populations, and at other times cities or metropolitan areas.

Importantly, a variety of methodologies are applied to different countries, even if selected as ‘similar’ for comparison purposes. Furthermore, ‘similar’ countries such as those across the OECD and the EU have differing constitutional, political, economic and social histories and contemporary contexts. This raises the question; where we are looking and what are the most appropriate international comparator case studies? 

(2) The terminology differs both in terms of how different sub-state geographies are described and the multilevel (re)distribution of governmental powers in different international case studies.

International literature most commonly focuses on decentralisation of administrative, fiscal, and political powers. Pike et. al, provide a helpful ‘sliding scale’ or ‘spectrum’ of decentralisationi

In the UK, the term ‘devolution’ has been attached to the agenda of sub-national re-organisation. The scale of decentralisation is strongly connected to when the UK government has sought to undertake reform.

Since the late 1990s, ‘asymmetric devolution’ has seen full control over a diverse range of policy areas, and some legislative, welfare, and fiscal powers, to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and to a lesser extent the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In England, the creation of a piecemeal patchwork of sub-regional Combined Authorities since 2010 is more closely aligned to political decentralisation.

This raises questions as to the overarching intention of decentralisation in the UK and why does the initiative exist? 

(3) Decentralisation, then, occurs to varying degrees in different states (including the UK).

In practice, it is rare for there to be ‘full’ (federal or confederal) devolution, or self-rule; more often we see shared rule. Measuring these varying degrees means that proxy measures of devolved or autonomous powers have to be used. Whilst these have become quite sophisticated (see for example the Local Autonomy Index (LAI)) they inevitably involve some degree of subjectivity. 

(4) In reality, in most states there are several levels of sub-national governance. The specifics of place and geography are key, meaning that ‘lessons’ from other international contexts are limited in value. 

In the UK, devolved sub-state Multi-Level Governance (MLG) systems are highly complex and irregular, and do not function in strict hierarchical, scaler fashion.

For example, Combined Authorities (CAs) in England, interact with local authorities and other organisations at a variety of scales. While each hold some decentralised powers, these are not consistent in their distribution, and CAs are dependent on other levels of government for implementation. Much depends on the actual practices of inter-level relationships, requiring fine grained knowledge not just of formal structures but of informal relationships; highlighting the importance of understanding who is involved, at what level of government, and how they interact.

What do we know? Impacts of decentralisation in different policy areas 

Research on specific policy areas underlines the importance of recognising the caveats outlined above, but we can also find some valuable ‘take-aways’ from reviewing international evidence: 

  1. The Economy: With respect to economic growth, impacts of decentralisation depend on its form, and context and purpose of reform. The relative state of the macro or ‘national’ economy however is key. This noted, once popular assumptions about cities being ‘engines of growth’ have been superseded by place-based ‘polycentric’ approaches which recognise the importance of multi-level institutional arrangements, and wider inter-relationships of cities, towns and rural areas. Moreover, it is clear that the particular combinations of administrative, fiscal and political decentralisation are important in terms of whether they complement each other, or not, in particular places. 
  2. Productivity & Inequality: There is some evidence of positive impacts on productivity of decentralisation to areas with an over-arching geographical co-ordinating capacity, but also a lack of clarity as to what scale this should cover. Contradictory impacts are found on inequality, where degrees of autonomy have been found to increase, and at other times decrease, spatial disparities. Effects on the delivery of a range of public services are similarly mixed.  
  3. Health: Impacts on health have proven hard to isolate from inter-related social, economic and cultural factors, and, as in other policy areas, causality is hard to prove. Again, the importance of context, pre-existing conditions, and complementarities between policy interventions is evident.  
  4. Democracy: There is surprisingly little explicit evidence of the democratic impacts. Intuitively, decentralised units should bring power ‘closer’ to people and stimulate greater democratic engagement and participation. Most evidence refers, though, to local government (i.e., below sub-regional level), and is largely inconclusive. 

Place, Institutional arrangements and ‘quality of governance’ matter. 

Having been presented with a lengthy and complex range of evidence, it is possible to state that ‘the Jury’ is not only out but is most likely confused. Sifting through international evidence is not wholly a frustrating exercise though; there are some broad but clear messages.  

Firstly, although we can’t assign benefits clearly to particular scales, we can state that it is the mix that matters. Decentralisation takes a variety of forms and it is the place-specific complementarities, or disjunctures, which produce positive and negative effects.  

Secondly, ‘place-based’ approaches are necessary but should not been seen to be in strict dichotomy with wider, national, distributional ones. The evidence points implies that decentralisation should take place within a coherent national policy framework (both across England and the UK), with sufficient freedoms and flexibilities at sub-state national level to allow for local knowledge to be utilised and for place-sensitive policies to emerge within an overarching institutional framework. 

Thirdly, following on form this, in all of the policy areas above, it is clear that institutions and the quality of governance are key influences. Both terms have formal definitions but also refer to a wider range of relationship-based practices and networks of interactions. Institutional settings provide the support, legal frameworks, rules, norms and conditions of behaviour of everyday practices which make the complex environment of MLG function or otherwise.  

Getting the right ‘fit’ of these things is dependent on political and cultural settings, along with historical legacies left by previous reforms (as is clear in the complex governance system in Yorkshire, and Humber for example). There is need to also acknowledge that devolution in itself is not a panacea, and its processes and overarching purpose need to be worked at and allowed to evolve with regards to what, where, when, why, who, and how. Reviewing the international literature therefore emphasises a need to focus on practices in actual settings, and towards behaviours and agency of the actors involved in devolution across Yorkshire and Humber. 

Next Steps 

Further briefings on the evolving evidence in the UK and related issues of local governance in the Yorkshire & the Humber region are to follow.  

Photo by Lewis Ashton: https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-view-of-the-staithes-harbour-north-yorkshire-england-10413677/

Sharing power for meaningful and sustainable change 

Dr Juan Pablo Winter, Y-PERN Policy Fellow (Hull, East Yorkshire & the Humber), and team invited policymakers, academics and people with lived experience to reflect on their role and examine underlying assumptions. 

Place-based approaches to policymaking seem to be gaining momentum in the UK. Whether people think it is cost-effective or feel it is just the right thing to do, the fact is that, over the last few years, there has been an increased interest in understanding the interconnections and relationships within a place and how working together can have a broader, deeper, and lasting change for the community. Within this context, in Hull and East Yorkshire, we have invited policymakers, academics and people with lived experience to sit at the same table, reflect on their role and take action and responsibility for improving the quality of life of their communities. In so doing, we have three underlying assumptions. 

Assumption 1: “Nothing about us, without us, is for us”.

The University of Hull is participating in several collaborative programmes across our city and region which seek to contribute to these agendas. The programmes include Y-PERN, Y-PIP (Yorkshire & Humber Policy Innovation Partnership), and the Ideas Fund. All three initiatives provide a space for the communities to be heard, to identify what is out there, what is needed, where the gaps are, and get actively involved from the beginning of the process. Consequently, to generate a collective understanding of policy, practice and community priorities around different themes, the three programmes organised a workshop together on the 5th of July. The event brought together more than 40 stakeholders from the City Council, the business sector, civil society organisations, people with lived experience and academia. 

Assumption 2:  Academics, policymakers and people with lived experience must work on sharing knowledge and agreeing on common understandings.

Participants were asked to reflect on what is already known about community experiences, preferences and needs around inclusive growth, green economy, and innovation. Then they were asked to uncover what research is needed to support and inform community-led policy and practice in each theme. Finally, the participants had to reflect on what needs to change about how communities, researchers, and policymakers interact. Unsurprisingly, an important part of the discussion was about academics and policymakers’ language. People do not know (and most of the time do not care) what acronyms mean or what sustainability or a greener economy looks like. Most marginalised and underserved groups worry more about their daily needs than understanding academic jargon. Moreover, there appears to be a lack of trust in information and frustration on how issues such as greenwashing have made people not trust the idea of a greener economy (leading to inaction).   

Assumption 3: Engagement requires time to know what is out there, build trust and an extra effort to include “the unengaged majority”.

The participants highlighted that there is a vibrant community sector in the region. The question they posed was how to bring those networks together. Other challenges raised by the participants were how to engage everyone in a meaningful way, criticising that there are always the same people participating in different projects (that would participate anyways, with or without being invited). Hence, the challenge is to engage “the unengaged majority” and reflect on the nature of that engagement, communicating better, building trust, and understanding the different timeframes between what academics, policymakers, and communities might need.  

Overall, we aim to build on current initiatives to shift and share power through innovative ways of working. We believe there is a big opportunity for this in Hull and East Yorkshire, with increasing initiatives that look for engagement on an equitable level, including funding for place-based approaches to policymaking and community engagement. Workshops like the one we had can help us build new ways of working with the community to promote meaningful and sustainable change.  

Good Work in the South Yorkshire economy

Against a national rise in low quality work, Y-PERN Policy Fellows Elizabeth Sanderson and Dr Jamie Redman set out an agenda to both investigate and improve job quality in South Yorkshire.

Over the last few decades, the UK has seen a rise in low quality work (Goos and Manning, 2007). These are jobs which are broadly defined as low-skilled, low-paid, insecure and more effort intensive, offering little scope for worker autonomy, task discretion or opportunity for upwards mobility (Shildrick et al., 2012).

Despite the introduction of National Minimum Wage legislation in 1998 and more recent National Living Wage legislation in 2016, incidence of low pay measured as below two thirds of the national median weekly wage has remained stubbornly high at over a quarter of all employees (Cominetti et al., 2022). This is partly owed to the effects of job insecurity on earnings, with workers in the bottom quartile of the wage distribution typically experiencing greater work schedule volatility (Cominetti et al., 2022) and persistently lower employment tenure compared to workers in the upper quartiles (Choonara, 2019).

Despite this, compared to previous decades and across most sectors, UK workers surveyed in the 2010s reported working harder and with less control over how hard to work, what tasks to do and how tasks were to be done (Green et al., 2021).  The Sheffield City region is no exception to the national rise in low quality work. Dubbed ‘Britain’s low pay capital’ (Thomas et al., 2020), poorly remunerated and precarious forms of work are found to be disproportionately concentrated in the Sheffield City regional economy.  

In May 2022, a key feature of the South Yorkshire Mayor’s manifesto was to tackle poor job quality as part of a broader commitment to building ‘a better not just bigger economy’. The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority have since identified a series of key strategic priorities geared towards addressing issues of job quality and establishing a regional level ‘good work’ agenda. The key strategic priorities for ‘good work’ are as follows: 

  • To establish an evidence base around the future of work in South Yorkshire, including planning for and managing the decline of some sectors and the transition to new sources of employment. 
  • To show and to demonstrate that good work is more than standards and compliance but can drive benefits for all. 
  • To create a movement for change rather than a club that rewards those already providing good work. 
  • To consider where good work practices currently exist and how these businesses can inform and champion a good work agenda more broadly. 
  • To consider the implications and approach for improving job quality among what may be hard to reach businesses.  

Our research team, based at Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and as part of the Yorkshire Policy Engagement Research Network (Y-PERN), responds directly to the mayor’s call for a regional level job quality intervention. We have developed and will execute a broad four-point agenda which seeks to both investigate and improve job quality in South Yorkshire.  These four points are as follows: 

  1. Build an evidence base. Understanding the issues around job quality, developing scenarios for change and learning from what has been developed elsewhere. 
  2. Deliver good work trials/demonstration projects. Through a mix of pilots and observational studies of existing practices we will demonstrate how new approaches to good work can operate in the workplace with benefits for all key stakeholders. 
  3. Build a movement for change. With engagement, involvement and leadership of business, intermediaries, workers and citizens, we will define and drive a good work agenda in South Yorkshire. 
  4. Draw lessons for influencing policy. We will identify calls to action for a future devolution settlement for South Yorkshire while ensuring that good work practices identified and developed in the Sheffield City Region are available to influence policy and practice across other regions of the UK. 

Reference list 

Choonara, J. (2019) Insecurity, Precarious Work and Labour Markets: Challenging the Orthodoxy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.  

Cominetti, Costa, R, Datta N and Odamtten, F. (2022) Low Pay Britain 2022: Low pay and insecurity in the UK labour market. Resolution Foundation.  

Goos, M., & Manning, A. (2007). Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(1), 118–133.  

Green, F., Felstead, A., Gallie, D., & Henseke, G. (2022). Working Still Harder. ILR Review, 75(2), 458–487. https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793920977850 

Shildrick., T., MacDonald, R., Webster, C., and Garthwaite, K. (2012) Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-Pay, No-Pay Britain. Bristol: Policy Press. 

Thomas, P., Etherington, D., Jeffery, B., Beresford, R., Beel, D., Jones, M. (2020), Tackling Labour Market Injustice and Organising Workers: The View from a Northern Heartland. Report downloaded from the internet on 27th March 2023: https://sheffieldtuc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SNAP-report-Tackling-Labour-Market-Injustice-and-Organising-Workers-The-View-form-a-Northern-Heartland.pdf  

We need to think (and act) in the interests of both the short and the long-term

Picture of a cliff at Bridlington surrounded by ocean on a sunny day.

To tackle the immediate problems of today, as well as considering future opportunities, we need accurate information, data and ideas, says Dr Peter O’Brien, Y-PERN Policy Director and Executive Director of Yorkshire Universities.

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the first Y-PERN Policy Fellows Development Day, hosted by the University of Bradford. Part of the core strategy of Yorkshire Universities is to work with policymakers nationally and in the region. One of the mechanisms by which we do this is through the Research England-funded Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network (Y-PERN). Y-PERN’s multi and inter-disciplinary team of eleven Policy Fellows, covering all four sub/city-regions of Yorkshire, is an integrated network of knowledge brokers, connecting local and regional university research and ideas directly into Yorkshire’s policymaking communities. Furthermore, if successful, in a Phase 2 bid, the Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership (Y-PIP), will boost funding for applied economic, social and environmental studies under the framework of the Y-PERN academic policy engagement infrastructure.  

On the same day I was in Bradford, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published its 2023 Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report. The OBR presented a stark analysis, which concluded that aftershocks of the early 2020s continue to pose significant risks to UK public finances. The report undertook deep dives in specific policy areas, and it was the OBR’s review of health-related inequalities that first drew my attention. The participation of working-age adults in the labour market has fallen dramatically in the aftermath of the pandemic. The largest and most durable source of the rise in economic inactivity has been amongst those citing ill-health, partly due to Covid.  

Twenty-four hours later, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain. One of the figures that stood out was that five per cent of adults reported that in the past two weeks they had run out of food and had been unable to afford any more. This figure rose to thirteen per cent amongst Black adults; fourteen percent for renters, and almost ten percent of disabled adults.  

Around the same time, the Government announced the first new Investment Zone in South Yorkshire, centred around the Sheffield-Rotherham innovation corridor, and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). An initial investment of £80 million is expected to pave the way for the AMRC, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and industry partners, to use and deploy research, innovation and skills capabilities and assets in an effort to address some of the biggest societal problems, such as producing clean, green heat, power and flight; tackling ill-health; and harnessing new technologies.  

The above examples feature short and long-term dynamics, and they are attracting the attention of policymakers and researchers. Whether it is tackling the immediate impacts of the cost-of-living crisis, reversing growing economic inactivity and poor health, or identifying new innovative products and processes to develop the next generation of clean technologies, these issues feature within Y-PERN’s work programme. For example, Y-PERN Policy Fellows are working directly with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s ‘Good Work Programme’, as well as the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s new Economic Strategy Call for Evidence on the ‘Future of Work’, including AI, and with local communities and partners in Hull and East Yorkshire on ‘Building Resilient Cities’ in the face of the climate crisis.  

We need accurate and system-friendly information, data, and ideas, to inform the practical actions that policymakers can implement to tackle the immediate problems of today, as well as considering the future opportunities and challenges facing Yorkshire. Focusing exclusively on the short or the long-term, in isolation, without sufficient reference to both, would limit our understanding of their symbiotic relationship, and could result in a failure of policy interventions to address either.  

Originally posted on Yorkshire Universities

For the public purpose? Local authorities and municipal entrepreneurship

While some local authorities have been derided for risky investments gone bad, some have also displayed remarkable innovative capacity in generating alternative revenue streams, says Y-PERN Policy Fellow Dr Neil Barnett.

The recent financial difficulties of several English local authorities has focussed attention on financial and innovations which have been pursued, extensively by some, over the past decade or so.

In particular, the role of commercial investments in the financial collapses in Woking Borough Council and Thurrock have been in the spotlight, calling forth calls of ‘I told you so’ from those who cautioned against (what have subsequently been proven to be) risky investments. Councils invested some £6.6 billion in commercial property such as hotels, offices and shopping centres from 2016/17 to 2018/19 alone.

However, this is far from the whole picture, as local governments have once again also displayed remarkable innovative capacity in the harshest of circumstances, generating alternative revenue streams, making novel trading and charging interventions in local markets, launching direct ‘for profit’ trading companies in municipal goods and services, creating public service cooperatives and mutuals in collaboration with communities, and exploiting procurement policies as a tool to support local economies.

Such activity has been interpreted as ‘austerian realism’- with councils, if reluctantly, subsumed into a neo-liberal agenda of financialization, and forced to turn to income generation to make up budgets devastated by austerity.

At the other end of the spectrum it is more positively associated with a ‘new municipalist’ turn, encompassing Community Wealth Building, which by 2020 had commonly come to be referred to in the UK as ‘The Preston Model’. Building on research carried out for the Association of Public Service Excellence, Professors Steven Griggs, David Howarth and I considered the motivations behind, and meaning of, these ideas and practices. We identified four main interpretations in existing accounts: municipal financialization, progressive interventionism, social innovation, and progressive self- organisation.

Municipal financialisation sees local state actors as ‘active executors’ of neo-liberalism, responding to private sector demands for value- extraction, speculation, and risk-taking, particularly with respect to land acquisitions and housing development.

Progressive interventionism focuses on attempts to create inclusive economies, the driving forward of civic provision of goods and services, including taking contracted out services back ‘in house’, invoking images of the high point of municipal innovation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Social innovation associates the practices with wider environmental and social changes and a broad need to move away from hierarchical/bureaucratic or ‘top down’ approaches, to more innovative and relational ones, leaving open a range of options for local actors to facilitate or leverage public value.

Progressive self-organisation emphasises more radical options and tends often to eschew the label ‘entrepreneurial’, stressing potential for democractisation of the economy and alternative forms of ownership and service delivery. The key actors are in fact situated outside of formal local state institutions, which are often seen more as part of the problem than the solution, with innovation generated from self-organising community activism.

The research, based on semi-structured interviews and in depth case studies using councils from across the political spectrum, used discourse analysis of the interpretations and statements of local actors to bring out similarities and differences in the multiple articulations and sketch out a grammar of the different usages of ‘entrepreneurship’ across local authorities.

In contrast to pessimistic interpretations of municipal financialization, our interpretation of the empirical evidence suggests an alternative possibility, in which the local state is a site and driver of progressive interventions in local markets. Indeed, this strand of the emergent discourse of municipal entrepreneurship challenges the long- held assumptions of the neoliberal model of the ‘enabling council’, which advocated councils contracting out and divesting themselves of local services.

In contrast, municipal entrepreneurship – whether in the form of house building, smart procurement, promotion of active and healthy life-styles, or social enterprise – leads authorities to adopt interventionist stewardship strategies that reconnect with the ‘big ticket’ policy issues facing local communities. It thus severs the enterprise narrative from connotations of neo-liberal, market-led growth so that under certain conditions the state can reframe commercialisation to advance the common interest and social well-being.

This interpretation of municipal entrepreneurship resonates with the views of ‘self-organising progressives’, as well as with the public value orientation of ‘social innovators’. Yet, it also discloses an alternative reading of the agency of the local state, opening up new avenues of inquiry for the transformative role of local actors in the formal arenas of the local state. In fact, the discourse of municipal entrepreneurship for the public purpose, which we discern in our findings, calls into question the risk of ‘state phobia’ and ‘the fear of the formal’ often associated with accounts of progressive self-organisation and social innovation. The practices of local enterprise that characterised our case studies were driven by actors inside the formal apparatus of the local state, working in and against established practices of local policymaking.

Overall, we caution against a too rapid desire to overgeneralise, arguing that the discourses and practices of entrepreneurship can take multiple forms; they can slip into logics of financialisation or forms of social innovation, or manifest as a form of self- organising progression.

In equal fashion, the discourse of municipal entrepreneurship for the public purpose is not without its tensions and contradictions, as it is always open to contestation and re-articulation, as well as to economic risk and market competition. However, our evidence suggests that markets can operate according to different logics, so that municipal interventions in local economies can challenge logics of economic necessity or technocracy to harness markets for the delivery of the public good.

Indeed, the analysis of our case studies adds weight to claims that local government actors act as ‘activist-entrepreneurs’, who are able to intervene to address market failure, sometimes through the logic of market disruption, as they seek to ‘reshape’ or redesign the operations of local markets. Given that these findings emerged at the end of intense financial and political pressures on local government, this points to the persistence of the innovative qualities of the ‘local’ even in the harshest of environments.

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Photo by Johannes Plenio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-and-white-wallpaper-1103970/