Think pieces

Introducing the new Chief Policy Fellow of Y-PERN – Andy Mycock

As Chief Policy Fellow, Andy is part of the Y-PERN directorate providing overall strategic leadership of the programme, working closely with the Senior Programme Manager, Kayleigh Renberg-Fawcett. Andy leads on the coordination of the team of Y-PERN policy fellows across the region, and the delivery and evaluation of the four programme Work Packages. He has responsibility for delivering Work Package 3 which focuses on policy engagement training, dissemination, and community engagement. Andy is the key contact point for engagement and networking with academic and policy communities across Yorkshire and the UK more widely, and dissemination of Y-PERN outputs.

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New job! Old books!

New job! I’m now a Y-PERN fellow, officially based in the Management School at Sheffield University, but mostly working with the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority (SYMCA, pronounced by folk who work there as ‘sim-ka’). Y-PERN (“Yorkshire & Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network”) is a pretty unique project – Research England funded it specifically to strengthen the glue between Yorkshire and Humber’s universities and its local and mayoral authorities, building on a memorandum of understanding between them. The project itself doesn’t have traditional academic research questions or output requirements; the glue-strengthening is the whole point.

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Roundtable write-up: Opportunities for students and graduates within local government organisations

Marina Tapley, Policy and Research Officer at Yorkshire Universities In April 2023, Yorkshire Universities (YU) held a joint roundtable on Opportunities for students and graduates within local government organisations. This roundtable brought together careers staff from the universities and recruitment and HR staff from local government to explore potential for further collaboration and coordination around …

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Higher Education Policy Landscape – Summer 2023

This briefing provides an overview of key Higher Education (HE) policy developments up to July 2023, highlighting national updates that will impact HE in Yorkshire, as well as examples of key developments within the region. This briefing was originally shared to provide context and updates about the HE landscape to external partners that YU is working with across local government and has been adapted for our website.

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Sharing power for meaningful and sustainable change 

Place-based approaches to policymaking seem to be gaining momentum in the UK. Whether people think it is cost-effective or feel it is just the right thing to do, the fact is that, over the last few years, there has been an increased interest in understanding the interconnections and relationships within a place and how working together can have a broader, deeper, and lasting change for the community. Within this context, in Hull and East Yorkshire, we have invited policymakers, academics and people with lived experience to sit at the same table, reflect on their role and take action and responsibility for improving the quality of life of their communities. In so doing, we have three underlying assumptions. 

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Y-PERN Blog – South Yorkshire Jobs

Elizabeth Sanderson and Dr Jamie Redman, Y-PERN Policy Fellows (South Yorkshire), at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University Over the last few decades, the UK has seen a rise in low quality work (Goos and Manning, 2007). These are jobs which are broadly defined as low-skilled, low-paid, insecure and more …

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‘We need to think (and act) in the interests of both the short and the long-term’

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the first Y-PERN Policy Fellows Development Day, hosted by the University of Bradford. Part of the core strategy of Yorkshire Universities is to work with policymakers nationally and in the region. One of the mechanisms by which we do this is through the Research England-funded Yorkshire and Humber Policy Engagement and Research Network (Y-PERN). Y-PERN’s multi and inter-disciplinary team of eleven Policy Fellows, covering all four sub/city-regions of Yorkshire, is an integrated network of knowledge brokers, connecting local and regional university research and ideas directly into Yorkshire’s policymaking communities.

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How to unlock green and place-based public investment with the help of HM Treasury’s Green Book and systems thinking in economics

How should government ensure ‘value for money’ of the public purse?  Recently Bec Riley and I ran a workshop on this question at the wonderful ‘Exploring Economics’ conference attended by nearly 400 civil servants. We discussed how valuation practices across local, regional, and national government are deficient – and how strategically vital green and place-based investments are being held back as a result.

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For the public purpose? Municipal Entrepreneurship

The recent financial difficulties of several English local authorities has focussed attention on financial and innovations which have been pursued, extensively by some, over the past decade or so. In particular, the role of commercial investments in the financial collapses in Woking Borough Council and Thurrock have been in the spotlight, calling forth calls of ‘I told you so’ from those who cautioned against (what have subsequently been proven to be) risky investments. Councils invested some £6.6 billion in commercial property such as hotels, offices and shopping centres from 2016/17 to 2018/19 alone. However, this is far from the whole picture, as local governments have once again also displayed remarkable innovative capacity in the harshest of circumstances, generating alternative revenue streams, making novel trading and charging interventions in local markets, launching direct ‘for profit’ trading companies in municipal goods and services, creating public service cooperatives and mutuals in collaboration with communities, and exploiting procurement policies as a tool to support local economies.

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Re-thinking community (dis)engagement: Who, why, and where? 

Dr Juan Pablo Winter, Policy Fellow Y-PERN – Hull & East Yorkshire The recently released Community Life Survey 2021/22 (CLS) revealed that civic engagement and participation rates in England were lower than in previous years and present significant differences across participants’ income, age and place of residence. Those living in the least deprived areas (4th …

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