Y-PERN

‘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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Catalysing the AI Economy: The Imperative for Skills and Infrastructure Development in West Yorkshire 

The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies, has brought about a paradigm shift in the global economic landscape. The UK is staking a claim as a leading voice in the direction of AI development and regulation, however the UK regions are vastly unequal in the preparedness to use AI to support their economies and citizens.

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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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(Generative) AI & Public Policy

In November 2022 ChatGPT was launched. ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot built on OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer class of language models and it rapidly developed popularity for its detailed answers, its articulate and creative responses, and not in the least as its answers could be easily shared across social media. The AI Chatbot space is particularly competitive with releases such as Google’s Bard offering comparative functionality. 

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Competent retrofitting policy & inflation resilience: The cheapest energy is that which you don’t use

Given that it is widely acknowledged that the cheapest energy is that which you don’t use, we take a tangential approach to issues of energy prices and inflation and focus on energy efficiency policy that reduces demand at source. Our focus is housing retrofitting from an institutional or framework perspective. We briefly set out what retrofitting is (since this is a moving target), and what the need for it is in the UK. We then focus on the Climate Change Committee’s current assessment of policy. This brings to the fore the government’s minimalist approach to ‘developing a market’. We argue that this approach invokes an individualised market psychology which is both conceptually and practically problematic, given the need for urgency and the current situation of inflation and uncertainty. We conclude by suggesting a fundamental rethink is required.

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How can Behavioural Public Policy contribute to tackling the UK Housing Crisis

Dr Richard Whittle, Chief Policy Fellow, Y-PERN In this blog I will briefly look at the contribution Behavioural Public Policy can make to solving the UK housing crisis. Note however I say contribute toward and not solve. Much of the criticism of behavioural science in policy revolves around it solely being the policy rather than …

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