- Wednesday 16th June 2021, 10am-12pm, via Microsoft Teams
- Chair: Jacquie Russell, Assistant Director of Strategy and Performance, Salford City Council
Introduction
The LGA hosted a roundtable discussion which explored, “how can councils deliver inclusive growth?” The purpose of this roundtable was to provide high level thinking from councils around the opportunities for inclusive growth and to explore the role of local authorities in promoting inclusivity when it comes to economic growth and development.
The roundtable was chaired by Jacquie Russell, Assistant Director of Strategy and Performance at Salford City Council who also delivered a scene setting presentation about the work taking place at Salford
Salford City Council inclusive growth presentation summary
Salford City Council launched their inclusive and green economic growth strategy in March 2021. It is part of a renewed focus by the mayor to tackle, social, economic and health inequalities in the city.
This was developed against a backdrop of increasing amounts of inward investment into the city which had led to the creation of twenty-two thousand new jobs in recent years as well as increasing investment from digital companies into Media City.
Despite this investment, there are underlying patterns of economic deprivation in the city and there exists a stark contrast between the most affluent areas in the city and the most deprived.
To tackle these issues, the inclusive growth strategy was launched to refocus how the council uses its resources and works with partners to invest in and develop plural ownership of the local social economy.
The strategy has five key focuses:
- Building local community wealth
- Growing the social economy
- Accelerating the transition to a zero-carbon economy
- Strengthening public services
- Strengthening civic participation and local democracy
The council is now focussed on delivering against the commitments in the strategy, and ensuring it is a core part of the council programme and not just a supplementary strategy.
There is also a strong commitment to insourcing and ensuring strong public services and harnessing benefits through employment standards, local sub-contracting and procurement, but ensuring this is balanced against the commitment to invest in the local economy and the growth of social enterprises.
The presentation was followed by a discussion with attendees at the roundtable which further explored some of the challenges that councils are facing as well as the opportunities that have stemmed from inclusive growth strategies.
The key findings from the discussion
Colleagues at the roundtable highlighted the points below as being some of the key challenges they have experienced regarding delivering inclusive growth strategies:
- Defining inclusive growth and ensuring it is embedded as a core area of the council. It is important to get the language right to ensure it is a collective effort across all departments in the council.
- Short term central government funding can make it difficult for councils to manage resources and make successful bids to launch their projects. Local authorities should be encouraged to scale up and coordinate their bids to achieve inclusive economic outputs across a wider region rather than compete for funding.
In addition to the challenges the following opportunities were also highlighted:
- There is an opportunity to build community wealth by investing and working more closely with local supply chains.
- Councils and businesses can work collaboratively to invest in the local economy and generate social value through initiatives which upskill the local population including creating a pipeline of digital and technological skills.
These points are expanded below.
Defining inclusive growth and ensuring it is embedded as a core area of the council
Local authorities have experienced mixed success in embedding inclusive growth strategies across all functions of the council as a core business objective. Inclusive growth needs to be collectively owned, and in particular, key partners such as public health.
departments need to be part of this strategy to help tackle health inequalities as well social and economic inequalities.
One of the challenges stemming from this is the use of the term inclusive growth, which to colleagues not working in an Economic Development/place-based function of the council, is a broad term and not easily accessible. This is also true for residents and the wider community. As a result, it is difficult to secure buy in across all partners and stakeholders.
Colleagues shared some examples of how they have tackled this. In Somerset County Council, they are working on publishing a prospectus alongside their strategy. This is a high-level evidence-based resource which identifies up to ten key priorities to tackle inequality and deprivation. The purpose is to ensure that all directorates and services can engage more easily with this by identifying some priorities that are easily palatable and relevant to their day job.
In Suffolk, they have created a Suffolk Growth Group which brings the local authorities in the area together around this agenda. However, they have moved away from inclusive growth/inclusive economies as a term and have focused instead on community wellbeing. A wellbeing strategy is in development alongside an economic recovery plan. The two are separate but share a lot of common projects and key outcomes.
Royal Borough of Maidenhead and Windsor council are carrying out a community engagement-based approach to inclusive growth. They have launched pilot projects to empower communities to come up with solutions as opposed to the council taking the decision alone. By doing so it is hoped that this can also break down silos between different council departments and bring everyone on board with this approach.
Short term central government funding can make it difficult for councils to manage resources and make successful bids to launch their projects. Local authorities should be encouraged to scale up and coordinate their bids to achieve inclusive economic outputs across a wider region rather than compete for funding.
The recent focus on annual competitive funding rounds by central government has proved to be a significant challenge for councils to manage resources and submit a substantial bid. Colleagues highlighted that the supplementary information required by the bidding process limits the councils that can bid for funding as it can favour councils that have fully developed projects and business proposals that can be delivered immediately rather than councils who have a focus on long term strategies.
Community engagement led regeneration plans were cited as one example for how to potentially tackle this challenge. For example, Warrington carried out a “central 6 regeneration masterplan” which was developed through extensive community engagement activities. This helped with government funding; however, it was difficult to maintain an intense level of engagement over the longer term.
There was agreement amongst attendees that there should be less of a focus on competitive funding bids and more place-based investment. Councils should be encouraged to work at scale and develop a more joined up, coordinated approach when submitting bids otherwise there is a concern that larger bodies and councils with significant resources in place will benefit more from competitive funding rounds. It was suggested that there could be lessons learned from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) in terms of bringing key partners together and coordinating project proposals.
There is an opportunity to build community wealth by investing and working more closely with local supply chains
Some examples were shared by colleagues around the opportunities to build local community wealth by working more closely with local suppliers.
In Salford they are looking to review their procurement strategy by breaking up larger contracts into smaller contracts to encourage bids from smaller local suppliers, for example facilities management and by doing so helping to keep the spend local.
In Somerset West and Taunton, the council is developing a South West Food Hub pilot project which is supported by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The project aims to support the region’s food network to buy local and establish shorter and more sustainable supply chains. The ambition is that by 2026, fifty per cent of public money spent on food and drink in the South West will be spent directly with small and medium sized producers based in the region. Further information is available on the south west food hub webpage.
Councils and businesses can work collaboratively to invest in the local economy and generate social value through initiatives which upskill the local population including creating a pipeline of digital and technological skills.
There was a discussion regarding opportunities to engage with business to achieve inclusive growth.
In Warrington, the council has created a company, Warrington and CO, which is the regeneration arm of the council. Within that, the company delivers a Business Exchange function which provides a forum for businesses to network and collaborate. This has been beneficial for the council in terms of engaging with businesses and delivering key outcomes in areas of employment and skills. It has helped to establish networks that previously did not exist which the council can tap into. This supplements their partnership with the Local Enterprise Partnership which provides more high-level industry led intel. Warrington and CO on the other hand provides more of a localised network of businesses.
A number of examples were also shared regarding some of the projects taking place in Basingstoke and Deane and the wider Hampshire region.
- The council has used data to identify the impact of COVID-19 on different demographics and have identified that young people are disproportionately affected. The council is looking to launch a youth hub in partnership with other authorities in the area to help young people into employment. They are working with a wide range of sectors including the creative sector to diversify the offer.
- They are also exploring the option of grant funding businesses to incentivise them to take on apprentices in the 18-24 age group.
- The council is also working in partnership with Incuhive to develop business incubators to support individuals and entrepreneurs particularly in high tech/digital sectors. In addition to the council, Incuhive has links with the job centres and has supported a number of individuals to start up their own businesses and enterprises.
Salford have worked with Barclays for several years through the Digital Eagles programme to train up staff and other partners to deliver digital training to the wider community. Not only does this help upskill residents for work but it achieves an inclusive output in ensuring that all demographics and age groups have access to necessary skills to ensure they can do things that benefit them in their day to day lives.
LGA support offer and additional resources
The LGA is currently developing their economic growth improvement support offer for 2021/2022. The LGA invited feedback from attendees at the roundtable regarding how they would like to see this offer shaped. The following ideas were suggested:
- Support for bid writing – However, it was also highlighted that there are other challenges involved with the bidding process, including the detailed requirements for supplementary information which favours ready-made projects.
- Using data to identify where to target resources and carry out early interventions to support the local community including residents and businesses.
- Highlight more good practice examples.
LGA’s current support offer:
The LGA will be hosting more roundtables as part of our Economic Growth Support offer. For more information on all of our upcoming events and publications on Economic Growth please visit the Economic Growth Support Hub webpage.
The website also hosts a range of case studies in the topic of economic growth, transforming skills and employment delivery.
If you would like any more information about the LGA’s economic growth support offer, please email [email protected].