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Let's face it - not all attempts at local economic strategy work out. Some plans sink without trace. Others enjoy a brief moment of fame, only to be overtaken by events. But it doesn't have to be that way. Here's 5 of the top pitfalls to avoid. Can you think of others? The best local economic plans start from an independent, data-led review of the present. Then they ask: where is the area headed if it doesn’t change its ways? They set targets that improve on these business-as-usual outcomes and prioritise actions to bridge the gap. For real-world impact strategies must influence decisions made across the local economy. But sometimes they fall short. Here's why... Chasing fads rather than genuine opportunities. Good plans show how areas can use their unique strengths to access future economic opportunities. But pressure to align with out-of-area strategies or funding sources can lead to 'place-blind' priorities that are ‘of the moment’. Confusing boosterism with strategy. In economic development, marketing materials sometimes bear the title of 'strategy'. But real strategies make trade-offs, set priorities and targets. They map the course between business-as-usual and aspiration. Failing to engage a diversity of perspectives. The way a strategy is agreed matters as much as the words in it. You should engage the full breadth of your community of interest. The strategy's visibility, influence and credibility with decision makers depends on it. Forgetting that decision makers don’t read ‘doorstop’ plans. Large, unfocused strategies don’t travel well. If you can’t share the gist in a one-page summary or a few pithy sentences likely it’s no good. Keep lengthy review materials like evidence papers separate from the main document but within easy reach. No clear plan for delivery – who owns it? If it isn’t the reference point for an ongoing programme of activity a strategy will gather dust. They should hold people and organisations to account for delivery. It should cover timescales and governance frameworks. Download the full briefing here:

Advocating for policy outcomes is a core duty of associations. But how do you mount an effective campaign and navigate member politics? (Produced for and first published by Climate Action For Associations) Campaigns galvanise memberships like few other things can. They become focal points for collective action and recruitment. They communicate values and authority. Associations can harness this convening power in the fight for climate action. And many do put the environment at the heart of their campaigns. But this is a big agenda. Success requires focus… Choose a topic that gets personal with the costs of inaction. The best membership group campaigns are rooted in common, shared experiences. That’s where you’ll find the unifying themes and passionate case studies. It’s where you can speak with most authority. Set a campaign goal with a finish line. Objectives that are unclear or too broad in scope undermine campaigns. They make it impossible to communicate well and grow support. If you can't describe the goal in one sentence and prove it’s been met, it's no good. Base your campaign strategy on a plausible ‘theory of change’. A theory of change describes how a campaign builds pressure on decision-makers to act on your goal. What are the staging points to a shareholder revolt? A vote in parliament to change a law? Behaviour change in citizens? Set and review metrics for each campaign tactic, then refine. Campaign tactics can be visible - like protests, petitions, the use of social and traditional media. They can be ‘below the line’ as with private meetings. Performance data help you identify what works best for your campaign. Empower your supporters with common resources. Effective campaigns develop momentum outside the association project team. Encourage this with shareable content, toolkits and template materials. Social media hashtags further help to ‘franchise’ the campaign. Download full briefing here:

Major change moments, like those we are living through, shape our economic geography. How can local leaders design ambitious plans in times like these? PolicyDepartment MD Mike Spicer, and CEO of Third Life Economics, David Marlow set out their vision of future local economic strategies. The 2020s started with two of the biggest changes to hit the UK in the last fifty years: COVID-19 and Brexit. For many working across economic development, crisis management is still ongoing from March 2020. This has been a time of unprecedented ‘big government’ interventions. Policies once thought unthinkable are now routine across economic, social and environmental life. The role of large, centrally-prescribed, place-based programmes is growing. As is the influence on funding of UK-wide policy agendas like 'levelling up'. So is it a distraction to spend leadership and management time planning for the longer-term future of your area? A luxury to develop new economic strategies rooted in the needs of place? We don't believe so. In this piece, we argue that such thinking is crucial as we move towards the pandemic’s turnaround phase. Now is the moment for local leadership teams to rethink the future of their cities, towns and communities. Both the roles they play and the sources of economic dynamism that will power them. We support this proposition with evidence and examples from recent exercises. We hope these make the case and illustrate how to set about delivering it. Changes in the economy mean changes to economic geography Economic convulsions tie back to geography in three main ways. First, through the rise and fall of sectors and the places tied to them. Second, when new industry practices, technologies or markets change the links between profit and place. And third, when people move with changes in jobs and housing markets. Over the span of modern UK history you can see these factors in each of Britain’s biggest ‘change moments’. Consider these examples. After 1918 the pre-war trend to consolidation in the UK’s banking industry sped up. In the years that followed institutions disappeared, rebuilt, merged and changed focus. A prominent case was the acquisition of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Bank (NNB) by London County, Westminster & Parrs. Once a force in East Midlands finance, it was subsumed into what later became the National Westminster Bank, NatWest. NNB disappeared from Nottingham in 1919. The impact of a place-blind oligopoly on the market for small business finance was famously captured in the 1931 Macmillan Report. Arguably, it lives on today as the persistent gap in funding for UK scale-ups. After 1945, the emerging pre-war trend of suburban living gathered pace. Towns were rebuilt around the needs of the car. Ring road systems went live from the late 1950s, channelling economic activity across cities like Coventry, Leeds and Birmingham. There were 'new towns' for the displaced and baby-booming populations like Harlow in Essex and Cumbernauld in Lanarkshire. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 regulated the pattern of development, introducing new concepts like Green Belt. As with the changes to banking a generation before, the impact of this rapid change was long term. You can see it today in the built environment of those places and the communities that settled them. The de-industrialisation of the 1970s and 1980s created new areas of deprivation – especially in former mining communities, west coast port cities and single-industry towns. The rise of professional services created new communities of wealth in London and parts of wider South East England, widening regional disparities. Like our other examples, changes in the economy were catalysed by the major change moments in society. Oil price shocks; the arrival of the jet age; containerised shipping. All played their role in the economic stories of our communities. There are reasons to believe that we are living through another big change moment. Coronavirus imposed changes on households, businesses and governments. The adaptations forced on us have altered the relationships we have to the places that matter most to us. These are the locations where we live, work, learn and play. Even if pre-pandemic norms reassert themselves, residual patterns of behaviour would still be transformative. If, as economies reopen in the second half of 2021, home-working rates settled at halfway between the pre and post-lockdown peaks, the UK’s ‘permanent’ work-at-home population would increase by 6 million. That’s more than the population of Denmark. Brexit too, has the potential to shape our economic geography. New patterns of UK trade with the rest of the world are likely to show up in changes to distribution networks. Many local economies, not least port cities, depend on how goods enter, leave and move around the country. The move to net zero greenhouse gas emissions is already reshaping industries from energy to automotive. The economic assets needed to make this happen, from battery plants to windfarms and green finance, all need places to call home. These too have the potential to re-shape our economic geography. Places face greater uncertainties about their economic futures Right now, economic policy is tied to decisions on public health. Uncertainty persists around the timing and nature of restrictions on economic behaviours. Even with roadmaps for re-opening now published, the pandemic could still surprise us. Medical science continues to develop new approaches to managing the evolving threat. The longer restrictions are in place the stickier temporary adaptations become. The scale of investment in new working practices increases with the length of the pandemic. Commercial decisions on space requirements become harder to put off the longer properties remain fallow. Consumer trends harden into permanent shifts over time. Take one example: the regulatory limit on contactless payments in the UK. Lifted twice in twelve months – from £30 to £100 - it reflects the shift away from cash that was accelerated, then embedded, by two cycles of national lockdown. If the pandemic were shorter-lived, would the limit have increased in this way? The trend may be irresistible, but the sanitary needs of retail spaces demanded the adjustment be made faster. Local areas face even greater uncertainties over the long term. As Overman and Nathan (2021) point out, there is nothing inevitable about how the economic cards might fall if employers rebuild, post-crisis, around remote working possibilities. Corporate fads; personal preferences; business strategies; the realities of commercial property rental - all are in the mix. Some may choose to put corporate functions in places with renowned expertise, rather than a central HQ. Others might operate on a hub and spoke basis – with smaller HQs and regional desks rented from co-working centres. Some may continue as they have in the pandemic with an emphasis on working from home as the default option. Some may revert to pre-pandemic patterns of operation. There are many possible outcomes. You can find support for each of them in the recent statements of senior business leaders. Local areas are not passive observers in this. Place marketing and economic development teams across the globe are grappling with a new reality. To attract new sources of economic dynamism in the future and retain existing ones, they will need strategies aimed at the full range of economic actors – employees and managers, not just CEOs and investors. They will need to consider the balance between inward-investment led strategies for growth and those focused on developing indigenous assets. What does a next generation local economic strategy look like? Ambitious places in the 2010s invested in understanding global trends. London and Manchester made plans. There were ‘future city’ exercises like Newcastle 2065, MK2050, and Reading 2050. In devolution initiatives, areas had opportunities to think big and local. At least in principle. Outside London and arguably Manchester, place-based strategies, even in City Deals and devolution agreements, were funding-led. They targeted monies in government programmes designed for national policy problems. For those involved, the lived experience was mostly governing and accounting for expenditure. Take LEP Strategic Economic Plans. They focused on Local Growth Fund and function-specific programmes across policy areas like transport, skills, and business support. And in specific places like Enterprise Zones or city centres. The overlapping and time-sensitive demands of funding bids made a coherent approach challenging. Award criteria restricted the scope and content of strategies. Political timetables created cliff edges and insoluble catch-22s. Local consultation and accountability did feature in individual funding streams. But in reality, public engagement and consent in local economic strategy struggled to reach beyond the ‘usual suspects’ and light-touch approaches. In statutory processes like the local plan, consultation remains formal and highly-regulated. As with the biggest shocks of the past, COVID-19 and Brexit will likely disrupt the currents of economic geography. They demand the kind of focus on place too often missing in the piecemeal orthodoxy of the 2010s. So, what might a ‘good’ place-based economic strategy look like in the 2020s? First, it must recognise that COVID-19 and Brexit are game-changers. These events are playing out in real time and their local impacts differ. Official datasets on the economy support policymaking over the business cycle. They are not designed to track local, event-induced impacts in real time. Second, next generation strategy should eschew linear blueprints. Build in rapid change, uncertainty and risk through contingency and scenario planning. Of course, some things from the 2010s continue. Many of the structural changes to the economy in that decade remain important. Attracting, retaining and developing young talent is a top challenge. Demographic ageing is still with us. But some trends are speeding up. The digitalisation and automation of our economy is more obvious. Climate change and environmental protection are bigger drivers of policy and public attitudes. At the same time, we face new drivers of policy, like public health and wellbeing. Social distancing and remote working counter growth assumptions based on density and agglomeration. There is a new focus on the importance of foundation sectors, core workers, local supply chains, and making complex systems work. Next generation strategy can build in these grand challenges. It can align with national priorities and consider local values and strategic choices. It can set levels of ambition and the relative priorities for these issues. This type of thinking and approach can refresh existing plans and strategies. These include local industrial strategies at the sub-regional level. Even place-based programmes like Town Deals and Freeports. This should not be a repackaging exercise. Any refresh should consider new ideas. It should be open to challenge from disruptive local role-players and communities. More than ever, local strategy must transcend traditional economic development roles and functions. It should work across specialisms like transport, enterprise or skills. It should bring behaviour change and local consent to the forefront. And it must be a flexible enough to account for new shocks. Practical examples Newcastle Policy and Evidence Hub A strong evidence base is always important to economic development strategy. But it is even more critical in times of disruptive change. Translating evidence into insightful intelligence and policy interventions demands a specific skillset. It needs strong, committed relationships between the major role players. This includes local government; economic development bodies; NHS trusts; universities; other anchor institutions and major business and community intermediaries. Many areas have regional or urban observatories. Some operate more expansive arrangements including think tank, policy advice and development functions. In Newcastle, the city council, North of Tyne Mayoral Combined Authority, NHS, Northumbria and Newcastle universities, and the wider North East LEP are establishing a policy and evidence hub. This will take and develop research from across the city region for addressing the most complex questions facing policymakers. The hub goes live in April 2021. Local and regional leadership teams should ensure they review and resource their evidence, analysis and policy development capabilities so they are fit for the purpose(s) of post-pandemic and post-BREXIT place-based leadership and management; and can be commissioned and tasked to deliver those purposes. Surrey County Council – Socio-Economic Trends Research Translating evidence into actionable insight means asking the ‘so what?’ questions of data. In late 2020, Surrey County Council did a meta-study of post-pandemic economic reports undertaken for the area and beyond. It drew on materials from academics, think tanks, policymakers and economic development bodies across the globe. It analysed over fifty traditional and non-traditional data sources. The study found eleven priority trends for Surrey to address in future strategies. In headline, these were: Increasing dependence of employers on the quality of local digital infrastructure to support business models Increasing importance of large anchor institutions like the NHS, local government and major corporates for a resilient, sustainable and inclusive recovery Accelerating shift of retail spending to online vendors Reduced entry-level career opportunities for young people New structural unemployment from forced changes to business models, increasing take up of automation and labour-saving technologies Increasing numbers of financially-fragile households More London-based employers offering full-time remote working / hybrid work models Decline in international travel, airport and aviation sectors/related industries Slow growth, ageing, and net-outmigration will put major pressures on future sustainable and inclusive growth and development in Surrey Increasing preference for accommodation types that Surrey will struggle to supply at affordable prices More Surrey-based employees and learners working from home / at nearby work hubs with local areas retaining more of their spending Place leaders should step back to identify the big picture issues facing their areas. Not all fit neatly into funding programmes or service areas. But understanding the co-dependencies – such as between demographic and workplace trends, infrastructure and consumer habits – will ensure that plans better address future opportunities and threats. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Economic Recovery Strategy The Local Economic Recovery Strategy (LERS) of the Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority and its partners is a rolling programme of live priorities. First published in the Summer of 2020, it is subject to regular reviews informed by a live dashboard of post-COVID crisis statistics. The dashboard combines public health data for the area with metrics for business performance and the labour market. It incorporates a range of data types, from official numbers on economic output to newer sources, like mobility data and job search. The LERS embraces the reality of a fast-moving and uncertain context. It maps priority interventions onto scenarios for growth and phases of the crisis which are themselves updated as new data become available. It is also pragmatic – as all good crisis responses must be – by identifying which actions are the closest to being realised, and which ones require time and effort to secure funding and delivery mechanisms. In this way the highest priority actions are allowed to evolve with both the crisis and the funding context. In times of fast-moving, disruptive change, strategy cannot be about door-stop data dumps and static visions. They need to be sophisticated frameworks for decision making, with regular reviews and trigger points for action. Recommendations The demands on place leaders and their wider executive teams are great. As they move from crisis management to turnaround and recovery planning, there is much more to do than respond to the UK Government’s latest propositions. They face new funding competitions, like Levelling Up, Community Renewal and Community Ownership. Then there's the habitual 10-year churn in the institutions for supporting local economic growth in England. There are many prescriptions for future local and regional priorities – including by this piece’s authors. What this paper seeks to do, distinctively, is make the connection between the long-run, big picture changes in economic geography and a small cohort of current practical examples of place-based transformation in practice – Newcastle, Surrey and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. We suggest there are 3-4 key issues and approaches to work on which each of place-leaders, their teams, and the wider economic development community of practice might focus. For place leaders New plans and strategies. Frame your tactical responses to government requirements and programme opportunities as part of a wider process. Take time to build local and regional support for a post-pandemic, post-Brexit vision. It should aim to be game-changing. And it should express the long-term values, aspirations and practical priorities of your cities, towns and communities. New approaches to devolution. Work with other places to develop 'home-grown' proposals for reshaping the UK state. Devolution propositions in the 2020s must be deeper and more authentic than the top-down, deal-based ‘haggles’ of the 2010s. ‘It’s more than the economy, stupid’. This may seem perverse as advice for place-based leaders. But you must aim to eschew territorialism and boundaries in your thinking and practice. New economic geographies will not align with existing administrative structures. Economic place-making should look outwards to locate local change in its wider spatial context. It must break down institutional barriers. And it must look beyond productivity and competitiveness. Give equal profile and prominence to social and environmental goals and drivers. For local leadership teams New types of evidence and intelligence systems. Strategic processes should recognise and manage information gaps, uncertainties, contingencies and place-based variation. The foundation for this is a quality local intelligence system. The data and analysis collected by it must be as comprehensive and 'real-time' as possible. And its outputs must be meaningful for decision-makers. It's about facilitating good decisions - not creating more door-stop data dumps. Embracing complexity, uncertainty and change. A fit-for-purpose, local leadership team must be cross-agency and multi-disciplinary. It will have direct intervention capabilities. But it will also a strong influencing role with its stakeholders and partner bodies. Structures and processes need to be flexible, adaptive, open to challenge and change. Building accountability and ‘followership’. Place-based leadership teams must address head-on issues of legitimacy, consent and trust. Digitalisation has been a driver for new approaches to involvement and engagement. But post-pandemic arrangements could become institutionalised before their effectiveness is understood. Place leaders should experiment with different consultative approaches before this happens. For economic development policy and practitioners Imagining new economic geographies. ‘Levelling up’ may be an ambiguous, politically-loaded construct. But it does serve as a useful catalyst for creative thinking about the future of places and how they relate. Economic realities do shape the administrative loci of place-making. At least to some extent. These realities change over time. Practitioners must be prepared to offer robust advice on how frameworks for cooperation should evolve with them. Refreshing skills, competences and renewing perspectives. The COVID pandemic has demanded much from the economic development practitioner. They underwent an accelerated form of 'on-the-job' learning for new working practices. They managed crises, processed government grants and bid into competitive place-based programmes. To perform well in the post-crisis phase will draw on other skills. They should seek out and form networks for creative thinking about new trends and contexts. Using these to explore concepts like ‘build back better’ and ‘green recovery’ is a sensible investment of time. But they need to keep a practical perspective and focus on real-word solutions. Changing the language and terms of the debate. Brexit and the pandemic challenge core concepts of economic development. Growth models assume relationships between productivity, globalisation, agglomeration and densification. Even where these relationships were changing, often it was assumed to be in a direction that now looks less plausible. The case for new models, tools and techniques is compelling. Tensions in the UK context are as acute as anywhere in advanced national economies. Formulating credible and compelling narratives for this era is essential. As is developing the tools and techniques for realising them must. For convenience, we grouped these recommendations by role-player. But they are not exclusive to each. Together, they form a sort of manifesto for post-crisis economic development practice. But this is with a heavy caveat of uncertainty. History tells us that in moments of great social change, the currents of economic geography can change too. Sometimes the impact is more or less immediate and obvious. Such was the case with factory closures during deindustrialisation. But sometimes, the full significance remains unclear long after the policy decisions. We believe this is likely the case with Brexit and COVID today. We can speculate about the impact of changing trade patterns and remote working. We can accept the likelihood that the UK's heat-map of economic assets will look different five years from now. But as of early 2021: it is hard to assign probabilities to the many competing scenarios. The best we can do is track the situation as best we can and ensure our decision frameworks and area plans adjust to new information. The Newcastle Policy and Evidence Hub is partly about intelligence and analysis. But it is also about local leadership and collaboration between anchor institutions. The Surrey research stresses the importance of asking the ‘so what?’ and ‘what if?’ questions. It's also about going beyond traditional data sources, assessing the impact of external drivers (like London and major airports) alongside indigenous issues and opportunities. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Economic Recovery Strategy illustrates the importance of contingent decision-making and scenario planning in 2020s economic strategy. We hope this paper stimulates feedback and deliberative exchange. Most of all, we believe further pieces that populate big-picture thinking with current, specific local practice are crucial to better local economic development in the turnaround and recovery phases of the coming years.

COVID-19 and the public health response to it forced massive changes on economies everywhere. Understanding what this means for places demands new approaches, sources of information and monitoring frameworks. Behind every sound economic recovery plan is an up-to-date understanding of the economy. Local leaders need this to focus resources on the right things. But the economic context of COVID-19 is unique. It is closer to a large-scale natural disaster than a typical recession. And these economy-stopping events generate information needs outside the scope of traditional development strategy... Consult widely to understand routes to impact. Major disasters interfere with everyday economic behaviours in ways that slower-burn recessions do not. The stoppages and adaptions that follow have big impacts. Some are predictable and visible but many are hidden. Look beyond official data sources to now-cast the economy. Official datasets on labour and product markets are designed to support policy making over the business cycle, not to track disaster-induced impacts in real time. Snap polls and published data from tech usage can help. Focus on the issues that are most relevant to economic recovery. Post-COVID economic assessments must support decision making in a fast-moving context. Local leaders need a clear, evidence-based view of the most important trends. Wide-ranging ‘data dumps’ help nobody. Answer the ‘so what?’ questions. The assessment should unpack the implications for the end user of the information it contains. Otherwise it’s just context of limited value. The analysis should map onto strategic priorities and areas of decision-making. Provide a framework for ongoing monitoring. Point-in-time reports age quickly during a fast-moving economic event. The best analyses identify core indicators to keep watch over. These will tie into trigger points for more thoroughgoing re-assessment and scenario planning. Download the full briefing here:

Launching a public policy manifesto demonstrates your leadership, subject-matter knowledge and values. But what do business groups need to know before drafting one? Policy manifestos are core to the public affairs work of industry groups. They do treble duty and this is what makes them so difficult to write. They must be sharp enough to communicate member priorities to lawmakers. Be flexible enough to account for the messiness of policymaking when used retrospectively as a scorecard of real-world impact. And they must promote the brand through the focus of its message… Don’t miss out with lawmakers: plan to meet their cut-off dates. They must make their biggest splash with lawmakers in the period immediately before policy commitments are made. Know when this will be for the political event you are planning for and work to it. Structure it around problems, solutions and opportunities. The sections must make narrative sense and work as standalone collateral. First establish your credibility. Then your member ambitions for the future. Show how these will benefit wider society and the policy reforms required. Design content to engage, not overwhelm readers. Materials should prioritise core messages, not the supporting detail. Back these points with stories and case studies that humanise them. Use data with visuals to clarify the impact of choices and costs of inaction. Plan for a brigade of campaign materials not a single tome. Single format, lengthy tomes don’t cut it. You need the full range of communication approaches to hit the spot with your audiences, who will have different expectations of scope, detail and how to receive the content. The golden rule for consultation is: ‘no surprises'. Resources and timing will determine how far you can go beyond testing ideas informally with bellwether audiences and stakeholders. But so will the anticipated extent of any departure from pre-existing policy priorities. Download full briefing here:

Economies could look very different after the Coronavirus pandemic. New business models, ways of working and societal attitudes are emerging - but will they last? COVID-19 forced drastic changes on businesses, households and governments. The long-term socio-economic consequences would be profound if any were to stick. But the empirical reality of the pandemic’s impacts has defied predictions at every turn. Business and economic plans should factor in the new trends and the uncertainty around how these will interact and play out in practice. Here is PolicyDepartment’s take on 5 of the big ones to watch… More competition for jobs among young people. In the UK 18-24 year-olds are more likely to have been furloughed during the COVID crisis in 2020 than any other age group. At the same time, online listings for graduate roles fell by almost double the rate for all jobs. Growing reliance of large employers on digital infrastructure. Through COVID, technology has helped organisations to complete a growing number of tasks with teams spread across the globe. But it is the quality of local digital infrastructure and services that underpins this. De-coupling of online and high-street retailing. In 2019 50% of UK internet retail sales were tethered to physical shops through ‘click and collect’ and in-store ordering. Pandemic restrictions on movement lessened this dependency as the share of online in retail grew. Working at distance, spending near home. If in 2021 home-working rates settled at halfway between the pre and post-lockdown peaks, the UK’s ‘permanent’ work-at-home population would increase by 6 million – more than the population of Denmark. Growing importance to homebuyers of space to work and play. Homebuyers have always valued space and access to amenities. COVID-19 reinforced this for many. Market intelligence suggests a growing preference for properties with gardens and easy access to public green areas. Download full briefing below.

Post-COVID economic recoveries present new risks to the wellbeing and personal resilience of workers. In a world with more remote working, employers may struggle to spot them. The recovery of COVID-battered economies should be underway by the 2nd half of 2021. To stay ahead employers must manage the post-recession challenges to employee wellbeing. Slow-fading disruptions to life outside work will join the usual growing pains of a fast-expanding economy. And should they stick, the new norms in working life will create new risks to manage.... Managing workloads in a fast-recovering economy. The confidence to hire returns slowly after a recession. Data on US manufacturing capture the increased workloads that go with this: average overtime hours jump by 10% six months into economic recoveries. The frictions of change in the rush to get ‘match-fit’. Most businesses see improving processes, cutting costs, developing new products and markets as higher priority post COVID. They will need skilled change-managers to bring staff with them. Disrupted public spaces and services. Pandemic-related challenges from beyond the workplace will encroach on working lives even as economies open. It will take time before schools, transport and other services are back to regular patterns of operation. Sickness absences and public health policy will still bite. The UK alone lost over 33 million working days to Coronavirus-related absences in the Spring of 2020. The need to protect workers and workplaces from the virus will continue even as rules on movement loosen. New workplace practices, new challenges to mental health. Employees can be reluctant to disclose mental health issues. Direct observation by others helps to identify and support those at risk. But more remote working may make behavioural changes harder to spot. Download the full briefing here:

I recommend that you read this wise piece by the NAO's Abdool Kara , published in the MJ. His analysis of the institutional chasm between local and national government in England sent me on a trip down memory lane to the pre-2010 era of economic development... I am a former denizen of that world. I worked in the 'intermediate layer' as an economist for a Regional Development Agency. And I remember well the debates of the mid to late noughties about the geography of governance. For a time, the question of what to do with the 'regional tier' gripped think tanks and political parties. For years, the op-ed pages of Regeneration and Renewal (as was) covered little else. Those debates always struck me as shallow and bereft of operational experience. Too often they boiled down to 'city good, region bad, local people know better'. And 'local equals accountable'. Or 'Regional Spatial Strategies are awful and invalidate every form of regionalism'. The arguments for localism often glossed over inconvenient realities. Like the lack of political pluralism at more local levels and its impact on accountability. The greater potential for organisational competition to undermine collective working. And the centralising dynamic inherent in funding competitions devised and judged by the centre. But anyone who has worked in economic development knows that organisational capacity matters too. One time, I worked on an appraisal for a multi-million pound investment in a science facility. It was a large, complex intervention in the East of England. At the RDA's initial appraisal meeting were economists; a commercial property specialist; a planning and development control expert; a transport infrastructure planner; sector specialists; an innovation specialist; an environmental appraisal expert; a former social worker; project leads for other interventions happening in that local area; funding specialists - and many more. All worked for the RDA. The quality of the appraisal and follow-up was first rate. These days, a meeting like that would be much harder to convene. The specialisms - such as they still exist at scale in local and national government - are dispersed among agencies and layers of government. There are notable exceptions to this. Some Combined Authorities and pan-regional bodies come to mind. But they stand out because they are exceptions and not the standard. I agree with Kara that the kind of organisational capability that is easier to establish at the intermediate tier - not least because you draw on talent from a larger area - would have been helpful in the present crisis.

Engaging with public policy on behalf of members is a core function of representative groups. But how to do this effectively, when everything seems to be changing at once? Read on for PolicyDepartment’s top tips for membership associations… Is the pace of public policymaking in the UK getting faster? And if so – what does this mean for public engagement with policy design? I ask because these are questions I hear a lot in gatherings of policy professionals these days. There is a perception of high churn in the rules and regulations that govern us. The excellent Institute for Government keeps tabs on activity in the UK Parliament. This gives us some idea of how active government is. But this only covers policy developments with a UK legislative basis. What about party manifestos ahead of elections? Proposals from government departments in Green and White Papers? The many initiatives taking place across local government and the devolved nations? In the last five years we’ve seen three UK general elections, votes for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Brexit has opened new fronts for policymaking, from international trade to immigration. Devolution and mayoral elections in England have done the same. The global shift in environmental policy too…I could go on. So ours is a fast-changing policy landscape. And there is no doubt this challenges representative groups to stay on top of events. Here are PolicyDepartment’s top tips for membership associations keen to stay on the front foot and get the best outcomes for those they represent …. 1. Develop your strategic vision, but update often... The first step is to build a robust framework for assessing policy questions. This could be a manifesto, strategy or corporate plan. It could be a report with recommendations for an individual topic area. Whatever the form, it must be more than a wish list of policy priorities. These vital documents are the compasses that guide positioning when the unexpected occurs. The priorities should flow from a vision statement. This will describe what the organisation wants - and what it doesn't. It will address the themes likely to drive government decision-making over the period. I would argue that in 2020 there are several big ones at the UK and devolved-nation levels. These include Brexit and the balance of power between central and local government. To that, add reducing regional inequalities and greenhouse gas emissions ('net-zero'). If you are targeting local decision makers, what do you know of their priorities? Any framework for decision-making must be evidence-led. The most sophisticated will include economic modelling and impact assessments. The majority will be based on a data-driven analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. To have impact, strategic documents must engage members. Without this, a weak sense of shared ownership will undermine visibility and credibility. Both with members and policymakers. The best draw on the lived experience of members and engage those in power you want to influence. The process should incorporate both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ elements. Convening members around themes and geographies is a good way to generate priorities. But some central direction is always needed to pull everything into a coherent whole. Representative groups sometimes develop manifestos ahead of elections. They may publish strategies for thematic interests. Often they write corporate plans for financial planning cycles. But it’s important to keep these fresh and alive with a more regular schedule of updates. Because member attitudes, like those of the wider public, can shift with events. As I write this, the spread of the Coronavirus is forcing policy choices at speed. In play is the balance of responsibilities between individuals, organisations and the state. Can your strategic document guide you through this tension? If not, the risk is that events overtake your ability to engage with them. 2. Keep current and prioritise using the ‘air-traffic control’ approach Representative groups want to know about the policy developments that affect their members. Taking a systematic approach is best. This minimises the risk that something slips through the cracks. PolicyDepartment advocates the ‘air-traffic control’ approach. Done right, this is an effective, complete and always-on system for monitoring and decision-making. It’s based on three core design features. Create a ‘big funnel’ of information sources News about policy developments breaks in countless ways. Of course it helps to cultivate the right contacts across government. Knowing a story will break will buy you precious time to consult members and respond. But remember, representative bodies are often better placed than government to judge what’s important. So there is the ever-present risk that an important development sneaks past. It could be in a proposed amendment to a Bill working its way through parliament. It might be one line in a White Paper or implied by a question in an official consultation. The trick is to plug in as many sources of information as you can to a central system for evaluation and decision-making: Invest in political monitoring if budget allows Sign up to information alerts from government and Parliament Set your Google Alerts for topics of interest Maintain good relationships with lead officials and keep on top of job changes Identify useful social media feeds Have regular touch points with trusted subject-matter experts in your network Encourage members to report developments that need a policy response Triage, check, decide The next phase is to bring the information together in one central place for your team to review and action. This is the policy version of the radar screen. There are lots of great online collaboration tools out there that can function as one. Choose the one that works best for you. Rate the importance of policy events according to potential impact and your expertise. Interacting with policy design processes is labour-intensive. You can’t respond to everything and you shouldn’t try. Pick your battles to maximise impact. The highest priority are those developments with high impact for your constituency and where you have the expertise to input. The lowest priority is the opposite. Sometimes the impact may be high, but your in-house expertise is low. In these cases, try working with other organisations that do have the knowledge. This can be true of the big cross-cutting policy developments. A past example is the introduction of enhanced data protection rules (GDPR). Respond Once decided, there are many ways to input to public policy processes. Ensure the resource commitment matches the importance of the development. This applies to media responses and more formal types of engagement, such as official consultations. 3. Build your knowledge base – and keep it handy… The third pillar is subject-matter knowledge. You need this to judge what is important and how to respond to policy developments. This must be a shared, internal resource. A ‘corporate brain’ that grows over time into a central repository of expertise. It should cover the kinds of information that inform responses. Topic briefings; notes from meetings; published and unpublished analyses; proprietary data are important. Your knowledge base must be available and easy to access while on the move. Think ‘mobile-first’ when you design yours. Cloud-based services like Evernote, DropBox and Office365 are ideal for this because you can access your content offline. This is a lifesaver when you need to respond and there’s no phone signal or WiFi. 4. Contact PolicyDepartment for advice! Keeping on top of policy developments isn’t easy these days. But it is crucial. You need well-designed systems to capture and triage information. Decision-making frameworks developed in close partnership with those you represent. PolicyDepartment employs nearly two decades of first-hand experience applying these principles in different contexts. We're here to help you build your systems and act as your strategic adviser. So do give us a call or email us!

The full list of successful bids into the £220m Community Renewal Fund was announced on 3 November. The largest of 471 awards (£2.5m) was for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough's Start and Grow enterprise programme. PolicyDepartment was on the team that prepared the bid alongside partners from Metro Dynamics, the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and Growth Works UK. The innovative scheme will promote enterprise in disadvantaged communities. It will connect budding entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses with pre-qualified investment funding available to those who complete an intensive learning and mentoring programme. The scheme will also link participants to other support services if needed. Commenting on news of the succesful bid, PolicyDepartment Managing Director Mike Spicer said: 'I'm thrilled to see Cambridgeshire's Start and Grow programme make the cut for CRF funding. We worked with a great, cross-organisational team to prepare this first-rate bid. It will make a difference to enterprise outcomes in harder-to-reach communities.' Read more about the Community Renewal Fund and the list of success bids here.