La “Educación Superior” En la Antigua Grecia: La Academia De

Get Bradford Working

Bradford Council has invested £10 million since 2012 in this programme, which by the start of 2014 had supported more than 550 unemployed people back into work and created more than 300 new job opportunities and apprenticeships working with local employers. This is core to the district’s employment and skills strategy and incorporates four strands:

 a Routes into Work Fund targeting the most disadvantaged residents to wrap around the Work Programme;

 an apprenticeship training agency;

 industrial centres of excellence focusing on key business sectors and linking to schools; and

 the Employment Opportunities Fund to provide 12-month funded work placements in the intermediate labour market.

A Retail Academy has also been established to give local people the skills they need to gain employment in the new Westfield retail development.

63 Leeds City Credit Union – increasing local disposable income

Despite being open to people from all financial backgrounds and not specifically established to tackle poverty, this has had an implicit positive impact on poverty – as have other credit unions in the city region.

In 2009, an independent evaluation of its operation found that its work targeting the financially excluded had increased disposable income by over £3 million – through saved interest in comparison with high cost loan interest rates of between 186 per cent and 272 per cent. In 2014, this figure had increased to a saving of £4.2 million. The organisation is now also administering funds to lend to support business start-ups.

A ‘NEET-free’ City Region – with more and better jobs, and a skilled and flexible local workforce

Through the City Deal Devolved Youth Contract programme, the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership has developed a flexible approach to achieving its ambition of a NEET-free city region. To date, this approach has succeeded in moving 69 per cent of participants into employment, education or training, with the numbers of young people aged 18–24 who are NEET reducing from 28,520 to 18,640 between February 2012 and February 2014.

Kirklees council – tackling in-work poverty in its workforce and supporting progression opportunities

Kirklees council has adopted a range of measures and approaches to benefit low-paid, and often low-skilled workers within the authority and to help increase their incomes and opportunities. These include:

 a ‘learning agreement’ that allows staff (usually frontline and low-paid employees) paid time off to attend courses to improve their functional core skills in literacy, numeracy and IT. These skills will be invaluable in helping them to progress in work and command higher salaried posts;

 early, plain English communication to staff moving from weekly to monthly wages to help them manage the change;

 commitment to paying a living wage (which is a rising trend in Yorkshire councils, with other notable examples including Barnsley, Calderdale, York, Wakefield and Leeds).

64 Re’new – connecting disadvantaged local people to employment

Re’new is a Leeds based regeneration charity working with neighbourhoods and communities across the city. Its vision is to regenerate communities – socially,

economically and environmentally – to ‘ensure that everyone has the same life chances wherever they live’. In line with that it has worked with Leeds City Council and St

George’s Crypt to agree a contract with Clugson builders and Veolia developers to provide the catering for their construction site in Cross Green for the city’s new recycling and energy recovery facility. This will use local employees via St George’s Crypt, with Leeds City College providing the catering equipment. Veolia is further keen to recruit local talent in the construction phase and to work with partners to provide employment and training opportunities.

Sector-based work academies – helping local people to secure work in Barnsley Barnsley council and Barnsley college are working with employers to help them train local unemployed people to fill new job vacancies. The ‘academies’ are focused on specific sectors with high volumes of current or imminent local vacancies, and combine pre-employment training, work placements and a guaranteed interview for recipients of Job Seekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance.

A good example is a partnership with global online fashion retailer Asos, whose distribution centre is in Barnsley and already employs around 2,000 people. Barnsley council and Barnsley college are working with Asos to help it fill around 1,000 new vacancies in the future, and have set up an employer-led skills academy in response. Support was up and running within a very quick period of around three weeks from identifying the opportunity, and about 25 people a month are entering the company as a result.

Alongside other ‘One Barnsley’ partners, the college and council are also signatories to a local apprenticeships pledge to have apprentices make up 2.5% of their workforce. The Ahead Partnership ‘Make the Grade’ Programme The Ahead Partnership is a social enterprise that intrinsically connects business, the economy and inclusion, including by getting businesses involved in skills and activity aimed at ‘giving everyone the chance to succeed’.

One of its programmes is the ‘Make the Grade’ initiative, which builds long-term, local partnerships between employers and schools. It aims to improve the motivation and aspirations of young people, while enhancing their employability skills and increasing their awareness of the world of work. It helps employers to address skills gaps through practical activity that develops young people to better prepare them for employment. Projects are delivered through a structured and facilitated annual programme, with hands-on support to help overcome common barriers faced by schools and employers when building partnerships.

65 Maximising the impact of investment – collaboration between business and the local authority

Two major new investments in Leeds city centre have recently come to fruition – Trinity Leeds shopping centre and the First Direct Arena. These projects have demonstrated how local opportunities can be created when a local authority and the private sector work together. An evaluation of Trinity’s build and first 12 months of operation shows:  622 construction jobs (calculated as ’32 months equivalents’) directly at Trinity, 55

per cent of which employed recruits from Leeds and the wider Yorkshire area, and all of which were paid at least the living wage;

 1,144 jobs (32 months equivalents) supported in the wider economy as a result of the development;

 180 young people benefiting from work-based training and 25 apprenticeships;

 4,634 employed in the centre, of which 73 per cent are newly created roles, 60 per cent are retail employees under 25, and 77 per cent live in the Leeds postcode area (90 per cent live in Leeds, Bradford or Wakefield);

 average salary for a retail employee is £6.99 per hour, below the living wage, but above the national minimum wage for all ages. The centre has recognised that this is an area where work can be done, and notes commitment to link local people to senior roles.

The approach applied will be carried through to other forthcoming investments in Leeds, for example on Victoria Gate, the Hilton Arena, and connected to HS2.

Connections between housing, the economy and poverty in Wakefield In Wakefield, the local authority and Wakefield District Housing (WDH) work in

partnership to enhance housing and access to it in ways which also support economic, environmental and anti-poverty goals. Council initiatives include successful loan

schemes to encourage landlords to bring empty properties back into use, support for energy efficiency measures (which help to combat fuel poverty), and loans to help tenants pay for bond guarantees.

WDH’s commitment to tenants goes beyond bricks and mortar and extends to transforming where they live, positive environmental impacts, helping people into employment, and supporting independent living. Since 2005, it has:

 improved over 29,000 homes;

 supported 465 tenants into employment and created over 1,000 work placement opportunities;

 invested over £4.5 million in improving the prospects of young people by enhancing skills and creating jobs;

 provided grants to community groups, invested in reducing anti-social behaviour, and promoted healthy lives.

66

What more can be done?

Interviews were concluded with a discussion about what more could be done to help better connect and deliver economic growth, employment and anti-poverty goals, and how they would score the current level of action across their area overall.

Table 16: Is enough being done locally overall?

Mean rating Range Stakeholder interviews: by sector

Is enough being done locally to connect growth, jobs and

poverty? 5.3/10 2/10 – 8/10

Local authorities 6.2/10 3/10 –7.5/10

Private sector 5.5/10 4/10 – 7/10

VCS 3.8/10 2/10 – 5/10

Health and higher education 3.3/10 3/10 – 4/10

The question posed in Table 16 scored the lowest mean score of any question in the survey, only just creeping above the red zone with a score of 5.3/10. All organisations were clear that more needs to be and can be done. That sentiment varied from a gentle ‘you can always do more’ response to impassioned calls to up the scale and impact of action dramatically. The VCS were the most likely to be in this latter camp, and their scores for the current level of action were universally low, as were those from hospitals and universities. Local authorities made reference to the need for much greater freedom and flexibility to allow a more fluid response to local business needs and sectors. From a skills perspective there was a view of funds being far too centralised with rigid

parameters and ‘too many strings attached’.

It is notable that the scores awarded by all sectors for the overall level of action in their area are below the scores they gave for the extent and interconnectedness of their internal action. This may well reflect the fact that many of the organisations who were interviewed are more active than others in this sphere, notably in the private sector. But it could also suggest a risk of some complacency around the sufficiency of existing internal action – not everybody can be above average.

The types of additional action suggested ranged from specific, practical measures to strategic and systematic responses. That spread is illustrated graphically in the (far from comprehensive) selection of quotes in Figure 10, which reflect attitudes and ideas

across sectors and the city region. To draw out one example, reference was made to the huge and as yet untapped potential for the smart exploitation of data. An example was given of early discussion underway with major utility companies to match up local authority data on benefits with business data on those struggling to pay household utility

67 bills. A further example is the early work in Leeds (including through the Leeds

Innovation Health Hub and the Leeds Data Mill) to understand how better use of data, initially in the healthcare sector, can drive improve outcomes for growth and well-being. In North Yorkshire, suggestions included an emphasis on better connecting education and employment, with much improved careers information, advice and guidance for young people to make them more aware of current and future employment opportunities and their requirements.

68 Figure 10: Examples of suggested additional actions and ways of working

c and must do more

What more should be

done?

Intentions are good but we can and must do more –

leadership is vital

Address childcare costs and widen provision

and uptake

Think ambitiously, prioritise and co-ordinate – including with anchor institutions and investors

More apprenticeships in poorer areas and funding

beyond 18 –24 Targeted responses at

individual/family level – break cycles of deprivation

Accelerate action on economy and poverty simultaneously – or gaps

will grow

Move from management to early intervention and

prevention

Joined up, flexible programme level regeneration

Build partnerships that matter and better engage with schools, businesses and the

community sector

Support to help people apply for jobs online

Food projects that build skills, support health & wellbeing and

cut living costs

Change perception of city centre jobs and who they are

for – widen access to them

Apply smart data to improve outcomes for

growth and wellbeing Find ways to help workers trapped in low-paid jobs to

upskill and progress ‘Seed corn’ fund to

encourage enterprise in disadvantaged areas

Build confidence - more mentoring and

volunteering

More councillors knocking on doors Understand where and how

welfare reform ‘bites’ in your area and respond accordingly

69

Resources and financial allocations

Tracking what resources are invested in economic development, employment, skills and anti-poverty work would provide a helpful test of how far action follows words. Based on the assumption that an increasing volume or share of resources dedicated to relevant areas indicates increasing commitment and impacts, then monitoring local authority and LEP budgets provides one way of assessing change.

In practice, there are a number of complications that need to be taken into account in this approach.

 Accessing and presenting meaningful and comparable information can be difficult – it is often unclear what items are included in quite broad budget headings in different organisations, and what proportion of an overall budget is spent on the areas of interest.

 Investment and impact are not just about economic, skills and anti-poverty budget headings, but about how resources within all budgets are used and targeted. Cross-cutting approaches that apply all areas of funding to the goals of economic success and reducing inequalities are vital, but can be extremely difficult to monitor quantitatively.

 The financial context of extensive public sector funding cuts is affecting all

agencies and hitting local authorities particularly hard. Even with genuine political desire to do and spend more, the reality may be that spending is reduced. Hence the looking at investment as a proportion of available (discretionary) budget will be important.

 The assumption that better impacts is simply about spending more can be challenged – one of the key messages from this study is that better alignment between strategies, organisations, issues and actions is required and will be key to making a difference. Success is about both the resources invested and how well they are spent.

A detailed financial mapping exercise going into the detail of individual items in budget sub-headings – as is sometimes needed to decipher what is covered – is beyond the scope of this study. Instead a pragmatic approach has been taken focusing on two key areas of spending at a city region level to which more detailed analysis locally can be added:

70  funding split by main activities in the LCR European Structural and Investment

Fund Strategy (ESIF) (note: this is constrained by EU guidance on % funding splits by activity);

 the funding sought for different activities in the LCR Strategic Economic Plan (SEP) (note: this is capital funding only and represents a bid for resources from Government, who will determine actual resource allocations).