CEDOS June 2021 Newsletter
Message from the CEDOS Chair
It seems like an age since the last CEDOS newsletter. In this time, we have had a Queen’s Speech, an ending to most lockdown restrictions, the Chinese have landed a rover on mars and my hopes of a summer holiday to the Algarve have been well and truly dashed.
Firstly I would like to thank Tony Wilson of the Institute for Employment Studies for providing a fascinating session for our last Lunch and Learn get together, providing food for thought about how the labour market may bounce back from COVID-19 and where Local Authorities should place their weight in the skills debate. For our next lunch and learn session, we look forward to exploring with members how the changing ‘place’ agenda will create new opportunities and challenges for the profession.
I would also like to thank David Walsh for his time and commitment to CEDOS over a number of years on the Executive. David is retiring from Dorset County Council and takes all our best wishes with him.
As we cheer on the Home Nations at Euro 2020 (sic) and our athletes at the Tokyo 2020 (sic) Olympics, it is clear they all work in a profession where success is relatively easy to define, even if often success and failure are separated by fine margins. In the local economic development sphere, the definition of success is far more nebulus and constantly changing. During the Blair years, the yard stick was an 80% full employment rate, during the post financial austerity apocalypse, success was measured by the size of queues at the local Northern Rock branch and in recent times by the number of people who needed to wear a lab coat as part of their day-to-day job.
Indeed, success in economic development, depending on who is in power, is often measured by some sort of yardstick about how many ‘haves’ an area has or how many ‘have nots’ an area has – and sometimes it can cover both!
As we progress with the Levelling Up agenda and some of the post EU regional policy initiatives gain traction, it will be interesting to see which definition of success prevails!
So when Harry Kane scores a hat-trick against France in the Euro 2020 (sic) final in July and Dina Asher-Smith romps home for gold, nobody will think about the 11 losing finalists as being ‘left behind’ and a symbol of unmet potential – and whilst the other runners might be ‘left behind’ physically, they won’t be regarded as holding back the overall productivity of athletics. What Success looks like in 2021, a thought for the over staycation summer….
Finally as always, if there are any colleagues who know of other Economic Development leaders who would like to join us, please signpost them to info@cedos.org.
Lunch and Learn Network Event Recap: 21st May 2021
Our May 2021 Lunch & Learn session featured an excellent presentation and overview of the likely short to medium term employment and skills issues as the economy comes out of COVID restrictions. The session was led by Tony Wilson, Director of the Institute for Employment Studies. A copy of the slides for the day are available here.
The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) is a leading independent centre for research and evidence-based consultancy in employment, skills, education and Human Resource management. Their mission is to use applied research and analysis in order to support sustainable improvements in employment policy and HR practice. During the Covid-19 crisis, IES has been particularly focused on trying to ensure that responses to the crisis can support a rapid recovery and leave us better placed to address longer term challenges around job quality, participation, health and wellbeing, and education and life chances. IES news alerts are available at this link or contact the team directly at askies@employment-studies.co.uk
Lunch & Debate – 16th July
For the next CEDOS Lunch and Learn session at 12pm on 16th July, instead of utilising an external expert to deliver a presentation, we have decided to draw on the knowledge and experience of our members to debate and discuss What place does Place now have in economic development?
As levelling up policy slowly starts taking some formation, it is becoming clear some of the old distinctions on regional policy that formed the basis of EU era regional policy are being quickly unravelled.
The north/midlands/south divide is becoming less meaningful than areas across the UK with low growth and productivity.
Many economic centres are having to revisit their core functions, changing demand and land use values could make some uses viable in spaces they were they previously excluded and the role of Local Authorities is becoming more prominent.
We hope you can join us at 12pm on 16th July 2021 and contribute to the debate. Please email info@cedos.org for information on how to participate.
From a LEP Perspective… The LEP Review
CEDOS members will be aware that Government are currently working with Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to redefine their focus from April 2022 onwards – reflective of the likely move of capital funding away from LEPs, but cognisant of the positive impact of LEPs over the past decade and the role that they have played in bringing businesses into the economic growth arena.
It will be important that the ‘division of labour’ between LEPs and local authorities is agreed at a local level. Whilst it is far from finalised, Government have indicated that LEPs will be given bigger responsibilities around areas such as business support, achieving net zero, inward investment and innovation. The important challenge will be determining this locally – the size of the role for LEPs on these themes in any given area of the country will depend upon how those activities are delivered against already. Is there a gap for LEPs to fill? Can LEPs add an extra value-added dimension to existing work? Is it an area where the intervention of LEPs is not required? All these conversations will be important and should be informed by the needs of local businesses and the local economy.
The timelines around the LEP Review are likely to slip beyond the original aim of reporting recommendations to the Minister by the end of July as many of the officials who had planned to develop the six propositions to form the overall recommendation have been moved to focus on the Levelling Up agenda. The propositions will be started by the LEP Network and then developed to a point of mutual satisfaction by working groups inclusive of Executive and Non-Executive representatives of LEPs and Government officials (they cover functions; geographies; accountability; interaction with Local Government; implementation and funding; and engagement and communications).
In the meantime, LEP officers affected by these changes will be looking to friends and colleagues in Local Authorities for support and openness as we all work hard to try to ensure that the architecture which supports local economic development is as effective as possible and puts us in the best possible position to respond to the foreseen and unforeseen challenges that the last year or two have brought. The outcome of the LEP Review will clearly be a strong focus for CEDOS over 2021 and into next year.
Adam Bryan, Chief Executive, South East Local Enterprise Partnership
Will the answers to our Town Centres fit on a Post-It Note?
“Put on a post-it the one thing you’re going to do differently when you get back to your team”. I have to admit that I roll my eyes slightly when you get to the end of a workshop and you’re encouraged to write something on a brightly coloured square that is designed to commit you to taking at least one piece of learning away. I understand it and, in principle, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do with all good learning, apply it in practice?
In December this year it will be 10 years since Mary Portas published an independent review into the state of our high streets and towns. This was followed with the Grimsey Reviews of 2013 and 2018 alongside Government’s 2018 High Street Report, led by John Timpson, and the more recently launched High Streets Task Force. The issues identified within each of these reviews are exactly those which we find ourselves dealing with as a result of the pandemic today, except they have been exacerbated over the last 15 months.
For a long time we have known that our town centres need to move away from an over reliance on retail, that we need to capitalise on the opportunity to redefine our towns as networked, community hubs and that part of the solution is the inclusion of a residential, leisure and experiential offer, which communities themselves need to drive. However, many of our town centres have declined further and whilst there are some examples of good individual projects that have been delivered in the last decade, it is hard to find a single town centre that has successfully managed to reinvent itself fully in line with the aspirations in the reviews.
This is because it is incredibly difficult to deliver the change we know is needed – having the knowledge of what needs to be done is a world away from actually being able to do it in practice. It is hard to achieve because there are long-standing structural hurdles to overcome.
Fragmented land ownership, Permitted Development Rights and an outdated Business Rates system all frustrate progress. However, I believe there is an opportunity here to adopt a completely new approach.
What if all tiers and types of local government across all roles, responsibilities and statutory duties come together to envision, facilitate, engage, coordinate and actually deliver these reimagined places? We would need to make sure our land and property teams speak to our Planning teams who in turn speak to our transport teams and our communities teams and our town centre and economic development teams and then, most important of all, that we support our communities, businesses and residents (not just the usual suspects!) to design, own and drive the new vision to delivery.
Instead of focusing on what we should do, maybe we should focus on how we should be doing it?
I realise this sounds idealistic and is easier said than done but, as we emerge from the pandemic, our town centres are facing exceptional challenge and now more than ever we need a new, transformational approach to deal with it. We need to take our shared knowledge and learning from the last decade and apply it together in practice. It might not work, who knows? But what I do know is that writing what we’ve learned so far on a post-it and taking it back to our teams is simply not going to cut it.
Dawn Redpath, Director for Economy and Growth, Surrey County Council
Early Reflections of the Community Renewal Fund
In March of this year the Government launched the Community Renewal Fund, a £220m fund to be utilised and spent during the 2021/22 financial year. The ambition for the fund is to:
“Support local areas to pilot imaginative new approaches and programmes that unleash their potential, instil pride, and prepare them to take full advantage of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund when it launches in 2022.”
Discussions with members have found the process at best challenging. There are number of potential contradictions within the design and ambitions of the Community Renewal Fund that are hard to reconcile as the fund is operationalised at a local level.
The first challenge is finding the innovative, pilot approaches that can empower places to tackle local challenges, and in doing so inform the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Due diligence on small to medium organisations undertaking artificially inflated projects over 6-7 months, often at multiples of annual turnover has made engaging with the VCS more difficult than it ought to be. Innovation has not really come from the inclusion of the private sector in process – and has frequently led to identikit applications that, with no track record or networks within an area, can suddenly engage 20% of the entire business base in six months or provide half of all inactive benefits claimant with a Level 2 qualification.
In the assessment process, I would not be surprised to see most Local Authorities come down on the side of balancing their risk, looking for local experience and track record and preferring organisations with the ability to deploy significant resources quickly rather that major investment in innovation and pilot approaches. The timescales have meant any organisation that needs to recruit to deliver a project looks more risky, as do those that offer to work with the hardest to reach (a priority for the CRF) in great numbers. There are clearly going to be a number of proposals rejected that would make great projects over a 2-3 year cycle that don’t cut the mustard over 6-7 months.
One of the biggest risks of the Community Renewal Fund, which will need careful management at a local area, is displacement and substitution. CEDOS members were fearful that all an areas capacity to deliver will follow the money into a very small priority area and for 6 or 7 months the other districts across the patch will not get touched. There is also a fear that other schemes, such as legacy ERDF/ESF projects, will follow suit or will struggle to engage clients – especially if the ‘offer’ of CRF projects is more generous. Finally, a further fear is that CRF leads to an uptick in double funding or double counting. All these management risks have to be overcome with a small overall management budget.
It is not clear how much the Community Renewal Fund will inform the Shared Prosperity Fund, there will undoubtedly be some good projects and ideas within a national level programme, as there will be projects who cannot engage enough beneficiaries, cannot deliver outputs and cannot spend the significant amount of money requested for a six-month period.
CEDOS will be working with members to understand their experiences of CRF and how as an organisation we can input into the debate and design of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Please feel free to contact us at info@cedos.org.
Rob Wadsworth, S4W and CEDOS
Community Renewal Fund Forum
Every first Monday of the month CEDOS will be facilitating a forum to discuss issues and share practical solutions and best practice around the development and delivery of the Community Renewal Fund. The sessions will be open to members and non-members and will run until May 2022, at the conclusion of the fund. The forum will be virtual and can be accessed via emailing info@cedos.org for an invitation.
Forthcoming forum dates will be:
Monday 5th July 2021 – 12pm – 1pm
Monday 2nd August 2021 – 12pm – 1pm
Monday 6th September 2021 – 12pm – 1pm
Monday 4th October 2021 – 12pm – 1pm
Please contact info@cedos.org for further information or to submit a specific query in advance of the sessions.
CEDOS on LinkedIn
CEDOS are delighted to launch our new LinkedIn company page for members to share links, news and commentary. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network and we look forward to engaging with current and prospective members on the platform. To follow and post please visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/cedos/