Case studies

In response to the pandemic, Kirklees Council has fundamentally and rapidly reassessed their approach to supporting their local businesses and residents

“We have used our powers to relax skills and employment funding rules and funding profiles for both businesses and providers – focused on areas of immediate need."

The Think Work Strategy is intended to boost the take-up of apprenticeships, encourage living wages with businesses, tackle unemployment and in-work poverty, and create good jobs for everyone.

At the end of March 2020, early into the pandemic, Gateshead Council formed a Covid Economic Response Group, with workstreams on people, businesses, capital projects, stakeholders, and innovation.

Lambeth is a complex borough with people from a wide range of religious, language, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. These facts presented both opportunities and challenges in our communications campaign to support surge testing.

With the onset of the pandemic, the employment and skills service had to pivot to online and alternative delivery approaches in a very short timescale to continue to support learners, young people and those that were being made redundant or who had lost their business.

Building on their strategy and growth work developed pre-pandemic, ECC quickly moved to focus on business recovery providing an opportunity to cultivate more in-depth relationships with business and support their districts.

HBC has been able to build on their longstanding partnerships with employers including housing associations and major corporations to continue to offer joint job training and employability programmes during the pandemic.

Staffordshire has taken a partnership approach with the eight district councils to identify gaps in government support and local needs and priorities.

The district councils have put significant resource into supporting businesses in their market towns through the development of, and investment in, a virtual high street digital platform.