As this report has shown, from affordable housing, jobs and skills to transport they have found new ways to support their residents with interventions that services wider inclusive economy ambitions. This is despite significant financial challenges over the last decade.
COVID-19 presents a monumental challenge for councils—creating sudden and potentially permanent social and economic changes, drastically increasing the financial burden on councils, and ending a period of national economic growth. COVID-19 will exacerbate economic inequalities and exclusion. While inclusive growth is now out of grasp for the foreseeable future, building more inclusive economies is not.
Below we set out our Policy Principles Framework, to help guide local government to implement these policies in future.
This framework for building more inclusive economies is based on the research IPPR North conducted on be-half of the LGA. It sets out broad recommendations and advice for local government officers interested in taking the inclusive growth or inclusive economy agendas forward.
The following framework outlines how the approach should be designed in order to maximise success.
It is divided into two sections:
- Seeking an exact and granular definition of inclusive growth (or an inclusive economy) does not need to be a barrier to implementing approaches in support of it.
- Successful approaches build on local evidence and ground their definitions and strategies in the make up local economies. This includes outlining the challenges to achieving inclusive growth and auditing assets which could support this agenda.
- By drawing together local evidence with an overarching view of inclusive growth, councils can develop a specific interpretation of what inclusive growth means in their geography. This should be the centre of an inclusive growth or economy strategy.
- Councils have significant levers to drive change and can draw on bets practice within their financial realities. The strategy does not need to be constrained by apparently impossible financial and legal obstacles, and much of this can be overcome by looking at the work of other councils.
- Community engagement is important in designing inclusive growth policies.
- Measurability matters.
- Make ‘inclusive growth; and explicit element of all your strategies, ensuring the agenda is being advanced across the whole council.
- Build political leadership.
- Lead by example.
- Communicate your plans and policies.