CEDOS November 2021 Newsletter
Message from the CEDOS Chair
November 26th sees our Annual General Meeting, once again to be held online. We are really privileged this year to have two high quality keynote speakers for the event, David King, Director of Regeneration at the Cities and Local Growth Unit and James Blagden, Senior Researcher and Levelling Up lead at the Onward Think Tank.
During this year one of our Executive members, and indeed former chairmen, David Walsh retired. We are now on the look-out for new Executive members at the AGM, so if anyone would be interested in joining the Executive please let our Honorary Secretary Matthew Shufflebotham know.
The CEDOS Executive will be following the outcomes of COP26 closely and it will form a key pillar of our future programme of activity, alongside the Levelling Up White Paper and the outcome of the LEP Review.
My views on the budget have been circulated to members and are available on the CEDOS website. However, as it has been Halloween and I have spent the weekend dishing out candy to ghouls and goblins, I have decided to pick a trick and a treat from the budget. Starting with the treat, a 50% reduction in business rates for a range of retail and hospitality businesses which will hopefully support our beleaguered town and city centres.
There can only really be one trick, which was a vanishing trick as the Community Renewal Fund didn’t get a mention and still remains the stuff of nightmares for those fielding calls from a multitude of applicants waiting for a decision. You never know, an announcement may be imminent or it might be a long way off, but one thing that is for certain is that if we do see CRF at any time soon – it is unlikely to be the beast that we and our teams spent a long time writing and appraising bids for.
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.
CEDOS Annual General Meeting – 26th November 12pm – 1.30pm
We hope you can hold the date for our Annual General Meeting at 12pm on the 26th November 2021. As special guest speaker at the event we have David King, Head of Regeneration at the Cities and Local Growth Unit of DLUHC and James Blagden. Senior Researcher and lead on Levelling Up for the Onward think tank. If you have not received an invite for the AGM please email info@cedos.org.
The Challenge of Jobs in the Digital and Creative industries
Anyone who has managed an economic development project working heavily with the cultural, creative and digital sector will know the dichotomy about a strong narrative of growing national employment in the sector (estimated at over 30% between 2011 and 2018 according to the Creative Industries Council) and the struggle to identify and capture evidence of these jobs in local projects. Counting is the central premise of monitoring, but counting new jobs created in the creative industries can be slightly more challenging (especially if the project is funded via EU Structural Funds).
The first issue with counting additional jobs is the issue of permanence. Many direct roles in the sector are short term in nature as many projects are short term and require specialist input. In ERDF terms, this is equivalent to seasonal, agency or construction jobs and many creative jobs often cannot be claimed unless they are 12 months in duration.
A second issue is what classifies as a ‘new’ job. Within the cultural/creative and digital sectors, increases in employment are frequently driven by an in hours within existing staff as projects ebb and flow (something similar in the retail and hospitality sector). These jobs are often cited as being safeguarded, but they frequently cannot be claimed as new or additional posts.
A third issue for identifying jobs growth is self-employment. Self-employment can sometimes be counted as a new job if there is a contract associated with the self-employment position (which is the case for ERDF). However, many positions in the sector are flexible and freelance rather than contractually based. Many self-employed opportunities in the sector are outcomes based not hours based and are very difficult to express as a Full Time Equivalents.
A further issue is the creation of indirect jobs – again frequently excluded from impact calculations. There is a very broad and overlapping distinction between creating direct self-employment jobs and indirect employment in creative industries (created within supply chains which are often micro businesses). Cultural/creative and digital supply chains generally involve the direct input of ‘labour’ – rather than manufacturing something which then subsequently creates additional labour demand.
The above factors create complexity in understanding the real rate of employment creation in the local creative sector and therefore the true level of impact of any localised interventions. This creates a gap between what national data, drawing from a range of sources, identifies about employment growth in the creative, cultural and digital sectors – and what local projects can record about their employment impacts (which are frequently far greater than can be reported).
The challenges of categorising and identifying what a ‘job’ is and how to count it are frequently experienced by ERDF projects and by pilot localities delivering the Cultural Development Fund, a flagship programme of the Creative Industries Sector Deal.
As economic development interventions increasingly move into wider sectors than have traditionally been the norm (including more activity in B2C space during the COVID-19 outbreak) these types of challenges will increasingly widen where employment is more vague and less measured in Full Time Equivalents.
It is hoped a broader definition of ‘employment’ will be utilised within the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, accompanied by a stronger impact methodology and guidance. This will help to capture a range of short-term, expanded, self-employed and indirect employment creation within the creative, cultural and digital sectors and those sectors with similar employment patterns.
The Net Zero Challenge and Opportunity for Economic Development
The end of October sees the start of the seminal COP26 conference, where nations and key parties meet to thrash out a deal to try to limit global warming to no more than a further 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is difficult to predict the outcome of any agreement and what it might mean over the short and medium term for individuals, Governments, communities and businesses. The agreements of COP26, coupled with BREXIT and the legacy of COVID-19 will be the key forces that shape the UK economy going forwards.
Already a changing language has filtered down to economic development – with sustainability rapidly being replaced by Net Zero. Net Zero is clearly an enhancement of aspiration, which will come with more challenging requirements for those that invest public money and work with businesses in this space.
Firstly, existing economic plans and investment frameworks (at least those that pre-date COVID) were predominately focussed on supporting the smaller steps of sustainability – especially the ESIF Strategies that have guided EU Structural and Investment Funds. A range of investment and support schemes have been designed on these plans and have been predominately focussed on reducing business inputs, especially around reducing energy usage and waste. There has generally been a healthy uptake of these programmes and outcomes have found a positive balance between ‘green’ outcomes which also improve business productivity.
As interventions inevitably move towards ‘Net Zero’, the challenges for business to adapt become harder and the sell also becomes harder – as pushing further and faster may uncouple what has been a positive and well received link between productivity and ‘greening’ for the business.
There may be post COP26 policies, linked with customer and consumer expectations, that may increasingly move businesses rapidly in this direction – but supporting them to achieve this will come with challenges. Progress will require far more wide-reaching programmes than those that offer an energy or green audit, some advice on carbon reduction and a small grant to support any implementation. A much wider set of skills will be required within project teams, probably a much wider set of partners too. The price tag will commensurately increase for all involved as many businesses have now either adopted much of the lower hanging fruit for carbon reduction – or the incremental benefits of further efficiencies mean less as energy networks become more renewable or there is less waste left to minimise. Further carbon reductions may involve serious change, investment or both.
The ERDF programme has invested in a wide range of demonstration projects, many led by UK Universities, which may offer the next step for supporting businesses to reduce carbon. However, key aspects to promote and support Net Zero in businesses have been less prominent – such as the circular economy, sustainable sourcing, ‘greening’ supply chains, smart energy, flexible working, climate resilience and carbon offsetting.
Supporting ‘Net Zero’ at a local level may mean future projects need to come out of the traditional ERDF sector constraints and work increasingly across sectors that have seen less penetration of business support including hospitality, agriculture and other primary industries, retail, health and social care and transport.
There are clearly opportunities at all levels for Local Government to ensure their local economies benefit from the net zero transition, many of which have been highlighted by the recent report of the Green Jobs Taskforce. There are major inward investment opportunities to be secured, especially in the energy sector. As an example, the UK Atomic Energy Agency has identified five shortlisted sites for a major commercial Nuclear Fusion demonstration power plant (STEP) – with a process to begin production of fusion power by 2040 through a £222m investment.
“STEP is expected to create thousands of highly-skilled jobs during construction and operations and attract other high-tech industries to its host region, furthering the development of science and technology capabilities locally and nationally” UKAEA
Similar large-scale investments creating large numbers of jobs are likely in hydrogen production and storage, expansions of alternative technology adoption in manufacturing (as is being seen with electric cars and batteries) and major renewables projects such as major new offshore windfarms in Aberdeenshire and North Yorkshire and the new Tees Biomass plant.
Local jobs will also be created in adaptation and transition within commercial and domestic energy use. Drawing from history, the UK transitioned from coal (or ‘Town’) gas to natural gas between 1968 and 1976 and 14 million customers switched energy supplies in only 8 years. This process brought huge challenges and opportunities – driven by the then nationalised British Gas. Over 40 million appliances had to be upgraded or replaced, major infrastructure upgrades were needed and new terminals developed for importing liquified natural gas until North Sea production reached sufficient capacity. The programme involved a major re-training exercise, with 13 regional schools delivering engineer training programmes that lasted 4-6 weeks.
Some major feasibility studies have now been completed on the technicalities of hydrogen conversion for domestic heating, which will likely be a similar scale of undertaking if it moves forward quickly. This has included H21 Leeds City Gate partnership (2016), funded by Ofgem, which identified how a major city could be converted to hydrogen heating in a short time frame. It is likely this change may be coming rapidly after the COP26 conference. Without recruiting additional engineers (and a figure of 100,000 has been identified as required by Frazer-Nash to complete conversion within four years) the current 130,000 registered gas safe engineers would take 16 years to complete the national switch over (Frazer-Nash, Logistics of Domestic Hydrogen Conversion, 2018) and these engineers, just like their peers of the 60s and 70s, will also need to undergo significant retraining.
Finally, there will also be locally driven opportunities for green job creation in commercial and domestic decarbonisation and climate change adaption, localised smart power generation, support for biodiversity and environmental enhancements, waste management and civil engineering projects.
However, within all these opportunities, it is important not to forget the value in making existing jobs in SMEs sustainable and making them ‘green jobs’. This will ensure as many businesses as possible can adapt through the ongoing transition process. To achieve this, especially if public sector economic development programmes are to act as a major catalyst, new partnerships need to be formed, providers need to be able to access wider skills sets and where the balance between low carbon and productivity is uncoupled – innovative ways to keep businesses engaged and to enable them to co-invest need to be developed.
Slides Business Cases – Lessons from Other Programmes – 25th October
Thanks to all those who attended our session on using learning from previous Economic Development programmes to inform the development of robust Business Cases. The slides of the event are available here.
CEDOS Levelling Up debate – 11th November 12pm – 1pm.
The last few months has seen a growing focus on the Levelling Up agenda, with Ministerial changes, a renaming of the MHCLG and new appointments to the Levelling Up Unit. We are aware ‘Levelling Up’ is likely to have different connotations for each Authority and CEDOS are running this session to try and identify common ground, share priorities and challenges and help build a shared understanding of the agenda from a Local Authority perspective.
Future of Economic Development CEDOS Research Study
CEDOS are undertaking research on behalf of members relating to the future role and skills requirement of economic development professionals in a fast-changing profession. Feedback from CEDOS members has been that there are currently limited opportunities (or awareness of opportunities) to enhance skills and experience through ongoing Continual Professional Development or specialist economic development orientated (and affordable) training courses.
Recognising the important roles we have in providing the right conditions for economies and communities to thrive, the role of economic development is moving more towards a place leadership role. In response to the above the CEDOS Executive are keen to better understand:
- What are the likely requirements of an Economic Development function in a changing world?
- What are the current skills and competencies within CEDOS members?
- Have CEDOS members been able to recruit/reskill staff to fulfil these roles
- What type of skills have members found most valuable in their teams?
- What skills are likely to be required by the profession going forwards?
- What are the skills and training opportunities that are available at present to allow the Continuing
- Professional Development of the profession?
- What are the gaps?
- What shared resources might be useful – such as template job descriptions, a CPD network or enabling focussed training and is there a potential role for CEDOS to fill any gaps?
We would gratefully appreciate it if members could spare a few minutes to complete the survey which can be accessed here. We will also be looking to interview a number of CEDOS members over the coming weeks. If you are happy to be interviewed as part of this process, please email rob@s4w.org.uk.
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/