Dr Peter O’Brien, YU Executive Director
The end of Yorkshire Universities’ (YU) 2024/25 year coincided with the anniversary of the Government’s first year in office. As we headed into summer, the breadth of complex challenges facing Ministers increased, and we saw a plethora of new policy initiatives and legislation, including the 2025 Spending Review, Industrial Strategy, Infrastructure Plan, and the English Devolution (and Community Empowerment) Bill.
For leaders in YU member institutions, the issues have also been multiple. The tasks of ensuring quality student services and experiences, upholding the value and practice of being ‘civic’ and partnering with business, public sector and society in localities, as well as widening and deepening opportunities for knowledge and learning, within a national economy with deep-rooted structural problems, is challenging at the best of times, and more so when working with a funding model designed for a previous age.
This year, Vice-Chancellors (VCs) have progressed actions as part of some of the ‘wide-scale reforms’ cited in the Bridget Phillipson letter to HE sector leaders in November 2024. The Secretary of State called on universities to play a greater civic role, make a stronger contribution to growth, including ensuring that more research delivers benefits to the economy and supports the Government’s five national missions. These reforms, which we expect to see more detail on soon, as part of the forthcoming post-16 Education White Paper, coincided with the extension of sub-national devolution across England. In Yorkshire, this year, full coverage of Mayors and Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) was completed, with the election of Luke Campbell as Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, whilst the Devolution Bill proposes new functions and responsibilities for MCAs over areas, such as strategic spatial planning.
At YU, during 2024/25, we have played our part in creating and sustaining the frameworks for our members and partners to strengthen collaboration for mutual benefits and wider impacts. Examples include:
- Local and Regional Partnerships: A refreshed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Yorkshire and Humber Councils (YHC) and YU was signed, and a new action plan agreed by VCs, and local authority and MCA Chief Executives. We have contributed to the development of Local Growth Plans and were unequivocal in our support for the Yorkshire Mayors’ White Rose Agreement. We have also contributed to the development of priority ideas in the new Great North initiative. A ground-breaking West Yorkshire HE Compact, which will be launched in the autumn, will also enable existing and future partnership work with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to nest alongside regional and national initiatives.
- National advocacy and Leadership: In October 2024, YU featured as a case study in Universities UK’s (UUK) comprehensive Blueprint highlighting measures to stabilise, mobilise and maximise the contribution of universities to economic growth and widening opportunity for all. Working at the regional scale, partnerships such as YU can help to contribute towards the HE sector’s transformation and efficiency agenda. YU’s advocacy for regional HE collaboration has seen us join UUK’s Civic and Local Growth Network, and the Network’s Leadership Group. Our commitment to work closer with Universities for North East England, Midlands Innovation, the N8 Research Partnership, London Higher, Universities Scotland, and others, which emanated from an initial roundtable at UKREiiF in May, will see YU and other regional networks take the model of place based HE collaboration to another level in 2025/26.
- International HE: On the back of YU’s International HE Statement, published in April 2024, we welcomed, earlier this year, the International HE Commission’s final ‘International HE’ report. The report presents a forward-looking, evidence-informed framework to support the sustainable growth of international education in the UK, and it offers practical recommendations for Government, education, and industry. YU featured as a case study, underpinning the recommendation in the report that a new International Strategy should encourage the formation of regional coalitions to work together on international talent attraction and retention.
- The Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network (Y-PERN), which stems directly from the YU and YHC MoU, is one of the leading academic policy engagement networks in the country. An independent evaluation has found the Network to be a pioneering collaboration, and YU’s strategic leadership crucial. From August, Y-PERN will enter a transition period where YU and partners will develop a business case on how to build on the first phase of Y-PERN, for the long-term. YU is already applying learning to a national initiative by participating in the new Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) national project funded by Research England.
- The Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) is designed to strengthen collaboration between university academics and policymakers in Yorkshire and the Humber to develop evidence-based policies that benefit local communities. YPIP is the only funded project of its type in England, and the idea for YPIP originates from Y-PERN. Notable highlights this year from YPIP include the launch of a Community Innovation Fund, as well as the open access Yorkshire and Humber Portal, managed by the new Yorkshire and Humber Office for Data Analytics (YHODA).
- In the area of Health and Wellbeing, YU brokered partnerships and insights amongst our member institutions to inform the Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) bid to the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). If this application is successful, YU will be a primary partner in the project. In October 2024, we also held the Parliamentary launch of our Health White Paper, which we co-authored with Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber, and the NHS Confederation. We will seek to apply the analysis and proposals from the White Paper into next year when the changes proposed in the NHS 10-Year Plan will start to accelerate.
- This year, we have convened several knowledge events to stimulate new Ideas and Innovations, in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Regional Innovation Funding, and Industrial Strategy. In the autumn, we will publish a new report on the AI capabilities across the teaching and research and innovation functions of YU members, to help drive their work with the public sector and industry, including responding to initiatives, such as AI Growth Zones.
- Skills and Employment is a core priority for YU. This year, we have developed work on local government career opportunities for Yorkshire’s graduates, helped to shape the Graduates West Yorkshire programme, and collaborated with One Creative North, and Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre. We have also had a direct role as a member of both Local Skills Improvement Plan Boards in West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, and we were co-sponsors of the 2025 Student Sustainability Research Conference.
The opportunities and challenges will continue to emerge an accelerate at pace. In a complex and uncertain environment, it is vital to be agile. YU’s new 5-Year (2025/30) Strategy, which we will launch formally in September, provides a clear framework to strengthen our work with members and partners to unlock potential.
This year, we saw Monika Antal, Assistant Director, leave YU to take up a new role at the White Rose Forest, after ten years of fantastic service, and we welcomed Kate Hainsworth as a new YU Associate into the Executive Team.
On a personal note, earlier this month, I was very saddened to hear of the passing of Kevin Richardson, my friend and former colleague at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). I knew Kevin for twenty years, and he first introduced me to YU. His working life took him from being the youngest NUM official in the Northumberland coal fields to advising Government Ministers and the EU Commission. Kevin’s knowledge and understanding around the issue of place, and his practical ideas on how universities could and should contribute effectively to local and regional economies, were way ahead of their time. He will be sorely missed.
