Case studies

The Local Government Association’s Digital Connectivity Programme awarded funding to South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council to create a new post for a ‘Community Digital Connectivity Manager’ to work with communities to assist with digital connectivity issues.

The aims of the SCDIA Digital Discharge to Assess project were to develop a cloud-based case management system that did not depend on a single IT partner or supplier; allow users (with appropriate permissions) to capture, update, track, and report on data about a person’s journey through the Discharge to Assess process; create a ‘single version of the truth’, with a raft of associated patient benefits and service efficiencies.

However, the partners recognised that modern design approaches and technologies offered them new opportunities to give customers a much better digital experience while reducing costs.

Dudley is a predominantly urban borough in the West Midlands, with five main towns interspersed with smaller towns and urban villages. It has a population of around 313,000 people, and a mix of affluent and disadvantaged areas. Nearly a quarter of the population live in areas that are in the 20 per cent most deprived in England.

Poverty prevention and alleviation is a priority for East Devon District Council. The council set up a working panel in 2020 to lead the creation of a poverty strategy and action plan, and then to monitor progress against it. The strategy has five objectives – including to help people on low incomes build financial resilience and reduce indebtedness.

East Suffolk Council has worked with partners across sectors, through a series of workshops, to develop a wide reaching programme to support local residents with the rising cost of living.

Herefordshire Council worked to support Leominster community to develop responses for people engaged with adult social care and families facing crisis.

With the help of Mind, Oxford City Council set about improving rates of sickness absence related to stress and anxiety by better equipping line mangers and staff to understand and talk about mental health issues at work.

"devolution is fantastic and I think we've proved we can manage it".

The combined authority argue that devolving the skills revenue and capital funding in the UK Shared Prosperity Fund would better allow it to align all funding streams and produce a linear model which would offer support to people from transitions into work to progression in the labour market.