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Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies

Autumn/Winter 2016

@SIPS_SHU

Editorial from Professor Peter Wells

The Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies (SIPS)

Last summer we launched The Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies just eight days before the dramatic result of the EU referendum. The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee gave a talk to a packed lecture theatre on the topic of “Our Inequitable Life: Can we make Britain fairer?” With the shift in US, UK politics and some mainland European countries taking a populist, ‘post truth’ stance, in addition to Michael Gove’s assertion that “people in this country have had enough of experts”, it may not appear at first to be a propitious time to launch an institute such as SIPS.

However, we firmly believe that this is the right moment to be launching the institute. The great economic, social and environmental challenges facing policy makers today cannot be addressed adequately by single academic disciplines, without full engagement of policy communities, nor without the involvement of the public. SIPS creates a space for innovative, inter-disciplinary working and capacity building to work with a range or organisations on pressing policy challenges.

Our expertiseSIPS’ policy areas of expertise include: housing; the impact of welfare reform; labour markets; regeneration; the voluntary and community sector; social justice and human rights; criminal justice; migration; public health; and education. SIPS is also concerned with encouraging multi-disciplinary policy studies research across Sheffield Hallam University with attention focusing on key cross cutting issues such as resilience, austerity, migration, radicalisation, devolution, public sector transformation, and young people.

Seminar SeriesThe institute runs a seminar series which will explore some of the issues highlighted above along with other key policy issues. For the 2017 programme please see the back of this newsletter.

Sheffield Hallam’s Policy Research Centres and DepartmentsSIPS draws on expertise from research centres and departments across the University including: the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research; Centre for Education and Inclusion Research; Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice; Centre for Health and Social Care Research; Sport Industry Research Centre; Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics; Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Centre; Sports Industries Research Centre; Centre for Health and Social Care Research and Centre for Sports and Exercise Science.

Find out moreTo explore our work in more detail, please visit our website, www.shu.ac.uk/sips

The institute showcases the policy research undertaken across Sheffield Hallam University with a view to informing and shaping policy locally and nationally. It provides access to leading academics and policy researchers within the University.At SIPS we work both with policy makers and with

many of those who are either implementing policies, campaigning to change policies or whose lives are directly affected by policy. Few institutes combine all these elements and it is our strengths in bringing these aspects together which sets us apart.

SIPS also runs a program of events throughout the year, and in late November we ran an event on devolution in the north which brought together local policy makers and academics to discuss the different sides of devolution and how in a time of austerity local government is wrestling with considerable policy and practical challenges posed by devolution. In this issue of the newsletter we are delighted to include articles from our speakers at the seminar.

Our next event on February 8th is on resilience, and the strengths and limitations of this concept for policy makers and communities. On April 5th we are running a seminar on what citizenship means for policy makers and citizens following the challenges posed by the EU referendum vote. We will finish the year with an annual lecture on 12th June 2017.

We hope you enjoy the Autumn/Winter edition of our Newsletter and we hope to see you at one of our events in the future.

Best wishes,Peter Wells

Professor Peter Wells is Director of the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies (SIPS), Assistant Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer in D&S and Professor of Public Policy Analysis and Evaluation at Sheffield Hallam University

Professor Peter Wells

Since 2008 there has been a marked increase in those on low pay (measured as below two-thirds of the median wage). Growth rates between city regions have also diverged since the financial crisis. For example, between 1998 and 2007 income per capita in Sheffield City Region grew at around the same rate as London (albeit from much lower base); but from 2008-2014 GVA per capita rates diverged with London growing twice as fast in real terms as Sheffield City Region. These imbalances were the very ones that George Osborne sought to address through the Coalition Government’s agenda of rebalancing the economy. It has even been suggested that anger about this economic inequality explains the success of the leave campaign.

Since 2010 the subnational institutional landscape in England has changed markedly. New organisations have been formed, such as the Local Enterprise Partnerships, with new powers given to some areas (such as £6 billion of health and social care expenditure to the Manchester City Region) and new funding settlements for city regions have been agreed in the form of deals. Local authorities and other partners have seized these as opportunities to take control of a range of economic and social policies.

These new funds and institutions alone are highly unlikely to alter the relative growth prospects for the north of England. The funding that has been proposed so far is dramatically less than under New Labour. Furthermore, after significant cuts to public funding, especially to local government funding, there is less capacity to take on opportunities.

Devolution in the UK – Unfinished Business

England remains a unitary state, only around five per cent of total tax revenues are raised from local and regional taxes. Compare this to some of the other major economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: 25 per cent in Japan, 36 per cent in the US, 40 per cent in Germany and even in the relatively centralised France the figure is only 13 per cent. Funding is a simple indicator; others indicators are found in local powers, from transport to health and from education to economic development. However, the fact remains that the UK, and in particular England, is now an outlier amongst economically advanced nations.

So far, Theresa May’s government has been relatively silent on the subject of devolution. This may be a strategy to distance her government from George Osborne’s championing of the City Deals and the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. Or it may be that the government intends to devolve few powers or little spending.

Now back on the political agenda is an industrial strategy and a commitment to a more active government in the arena of economic policy. On the one hand the post Brexit devaluation of the pound is propitious and provides a considerable competitive advantage to exporters. This may provide a good time for implementing an export led industrial strategy. On the other hand Brexit in any form is likely to bring political and economic uncertainty for some time, just the thing to deter long term investment decisions by businesses. New capital and skills investment is essential if the UK economy is to not fall further in terms of productivity; a perennial problem for many sectors of the UK economy.

Since the financial crisis of 2007-8 the UK economy has grown, but not all have shared in this growth.

So where next for devolution? A starting point lies in the need for a central government commitment to making the best of existing arrangements of City Deals, Combined Authorities and LEPs, at least in the short to medium term. Successful industrial strategies in other countries combine a national framework with appropriate fiscal support. They also involve coordinated public and private action at a local and regional level to steer investment in industrial capacity, enhance skills and create the conditions for innovation. And perhaps the most difficult challenge for government to grasp is a constitutional one: what legal and fiscal powers should be devolved? Without such measures, regional inequality is likely to persist and some of the pressures which led to the leave vote in the EU referendum will remain unaddressed.

By Professor Peter Wells

such as unemployment and low earnings. The remaining nine indicators measured economic ‘prosperity’ in terms of business creation and workforce skills. The graphic below shows that some areas, such as London and Greater Manchester, which had high levels of poverty to start with saw significant economic growth between 2010-14 (as measured by a high prosperity score) but comparatively little change in poverty and deprivation (as measured by a low inclusion score). This confirms that growth does not always benefit all.

In this context, the growing interest in inclusive growth feels very timely. It’s a notion that has been championed by international organisations such as the OECD and has now taken hold in the UK. The RSA have launched an Inclusive Growth Commission whilst devolution has seen city regional institutions such as LEPs and combined authorities promote visions of ‘inclusive’ or ‘good’ growth.

The concept of Inclusive growth is a valuable step in challenging the discredited trickle down model which has largely failed to address the persistent and enduring inequalities in the UK’s regions and cities. The RSA Commission’s interim report makes an important point about future rounds of devolution requiring a stronger focus on social programmes around skills, education and health, rather than just economic development. It also asserts the need to discard the straitjacket of austerity so that localities receive genuine additional funding through future devolution settlements to support inclusive growth activities.

However, the tendency to focus on localities begs a more fundamental question which has not been fully addressed in the debate around inclusive

Devolution – Can it Deliver Inclusive Growth?

growth: to what extent can local problems be addressed through local solutions? Inclusive growth might be achievable in successful and growing city regions such as Greater Manchester, but arguably may be less viable in areas such as the Tees Valley and the Black Country dominated by ‘third tier’; towns and cities. Low growth in these areas will mean there are fewer proceeds to go around. Even in city regions dominated by core cities such as Greater Manchester, stark inequalities are still likely to persist in hourglass economies where the benefits of growth will accrue to the highly skilled in better paid jobs rather than the Deliveroo drivers that serve them.

These inequalities are often rooted in wider national and international political and economic factors that all serve to concentrate wealth and income but are not readily amenable to local interventions.

How can city regions, for example, respond to the rise of the ‘gig’ economy, the deregulation and dominance of the financial sector, the loss of tax revenues through offshoring, and national changes to public spending and tax and benefits under ‘Austerity’.

Findings from ongoing research we are undertaking for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on how city regions can shape housing and planning policy policies to support poverty reduction illustrates one aspect of this. Genuinely affordable housing is a key pillar of inclusive growth as it can enable low income households to live in areas close to employment opportunities and provide the security necessary to secure and sustain paid work. Yet conversations with stakeholders from LEPs and combined authorities show ambitions to deliver affordable housing are hamstrung by a

number of national policy drivers. These include the prioritisation of homeownership, the extension of right-to-buy that threatens new social housing, and cuts in Housing Benefit entitlements that undermine the rental streams needed to fund investment in housing.

This is just one telling example of how the weight of expectation that devolution can drive inclusive growth is perhaps too high. The deal-based nature of devolution in England means ‘asks’ and ‘offers’ are framed around the priorities of central government which are not always conducive to inclusive growth. This may change as city regions become bolder in their requests or, in the longer-term, as the political hue of government changes. But as it stands, a shift towards a radical new model of inclusive growth seems a distant prospect under current governance arrangements.

By Dr Richard Crisp, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University

As the world still reels from Trump’s victory in the US and the summer of Brexit, the narrative of people feeling angry and left behind by economic growth has featured prominently in commentaries attempting to explain the seismic events of 2016.

The rise of the wealthy global elite with increasing levels of inequality in Anglo-Saxon economies has been seen to account for the apparent implosion of centrist politics and the rise of the populist right.

Undoubtedly, there is a far more complex web of factors at play in explaining Brexit and Trump than economic dispossession and injustice. But the exclusion of some groups to share in the proceeds of growth is certainly a feature of economic change in the UK.

Recent research undertaken by academics at Sheffield Hallam University has explored the relationship between poverty and growth across all 39 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) areas across England. Nine indicators captured the extent to which areas achieve ‘inclusion’ as measured by positive outcomes around poverty-related factors

Dr Richard Crisp

In late 2014, the Cameron-led UK Government announced its flagship Northern Powerhouse initiative. City regions were to be given more ‘powers’ to develop initiatives in their local areas, in order to regenerate city economies, which for many years lagged behind in terms of growth and prosperity. The Northern Powerhouse in effect expands on and consolidates previous devolution initiatives allowing the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and local authority leaders from Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield to collaborate ‘strategically’ on key issues. This included increased powers over transport and economic planning; electing their own Mayors; some powers to manage health; new employment and skills power via apprenticeships; and in 2017, the co-commissioning of welfare to work policies. Much of the devolution debate has been focused on economic ‘growth’, but pressing questions remain as to what kind of local and regional development is optimal, and for whom? We argue that devolution involves austerity driven cuts which reinforce social and geographical inequalities.

The nature of labour market disadvantage in the Sheffield City Region typifies most deindustrialised areas and is complex and relates to a variety of groups such as women, young people and BAMEs as well as those on long term sickness and disability benefits. These groups are disproportionately impacted by austerity driven cuts causing financial hardship. We argue that the Devolution Deals and Agreements are closely linked to austerity policies and the various cuts (some of these being welfare-rated). The Devolution deal for the Sheffield City Region financially involves £900m over 30 years (subject of course to an elected Mayor and other milestones), we have found that cuts to welfare and local authority budgets between 2010 – 2014 amounted to £1.1 billion. Devolution has conditions and strings attached. The October 2016 Devolution Agreement, makes this clear that: “The devolution proposal and all level of funding are subject to the Spending Review…” under the ‘Fiscal’ heading, the devolution table has to run alongside and not fundamentally challenge the Spending Review timetable. These are parallel developments. The SCR also has responsibility for chairing Area-Based Reviews for 16+ skills provisions for instance, which having been subjected to intense budget cuts in recent years, designed to legitimise and facilitate the restructuring of further education colleges and other providers. Furthermore devolution will incorporate a new health and work programme which will be run on a significantly reduced budget than that allocated to the Work Programme. Welfare cuts are in no way actually contributing to raising employment rates. In reality, austerity is contributing to increased personal and family impoverishment and debt, but it is also seriously undermining the city-regional growth model trumpeted by the Northern Powerhouse.

By Dr David Etherington, Middlesex University and Professor Martin Jones University of Sheffield

Devolution and the Sheffield City Region

The process hasn’t been universal, or without its bumps. But what we have delivered has brought in some real powers and funding, in particular in terms of transport and skills, to local regions, cities and communities.

Brexit will be a game changer for the UK economy, making devolution and localism more important than ever. The Local Government Association and other commentators are correct when they say that communities need a strong voice in this process and that Brexit must go hand in hand with more devolved powers to regions across the UK.

One lesson we can learn from Europe and beyond is that regions and cities with strong local powers and greater control of their own finances are economically stronger with less inequality. Local control and local accountability makes public investment better targeted and public services more accountable to those they serve.

We may see choppy economic waters ahead. If so, giving local regions the powers and flexibility they need to respond quickly and effectively to threats, to protect existing jobs and to attract new ones will be vital. The more powers local areas have to work with business – the more effective that relationship will be.

The question is not about mayors or a different governance model; it is about powers for places. This is a vital in the long term to ensure that every place in the north has a sustainable future. The Victorian Northern Powerhouse was not built by Whitehall but by business and regions in the north developing their economies together. The more devolution we secure – the greater our opportunity to emulate the success of our predecessors in our towns and cities.

My hope is that the Government’s forthcoming industrial strategy recognises this truth, and gives us the tools and freedom to make our places an asset, not only to the people who live, work, learn and play in them, but also to UK PLC as a whole. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved so far and want to us to go on to give the north the power to determine its own future.

By Joanne Roney OBE, Chief Executive at Wakefield Council, @joanneroney

Devolution for the North after Brexit – Why it’s Now More Important than EverSince 2010, colleagues and I in Councils across the North of England have been working with the Government to design and deliver devolved powers for our economy and our towns and cities, through city deals and other devolution agreements.

Dr David Etherington

Resilience(8th February 2017, 4.30pm-6.30pm, The Stoddart Building Room 7138)

Conceptualising and applying resilience in a social policy context. Keynote presentations include:

Exploring Concepts and Realities – Deborah Platts-Fowler (Department of Law and Criminology) and Professor David Robinson (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research), Sheffield Hallam University.

Household responses to economic hardship in post-crisis Europe and insights about ‘resilience’: A critical assessment – Professor Hulya Dagdeviren and Dr Matthew Donaghue, University of Hertfordshire. Problematising and reconceptualising resilience in Higher Education – Professor Jacqueline Stevenson, Sheffield Hallam University.

Citizenship(5th April 2017, 4-6pm, Heart of the Campus)

What are the challenges of engaging marginalised populations within inclusive communities?

Confirmed keynote speaker includes: DCC Andy Rhodes (Lancashire Police) – other speakers to be confirmed.

The focus of this seminar will be on policy and practice initiatives that exclude, or include certain social groups from active participation, and will examine the idea of empathic citizenship from the perspective of individuals and communities.

Upcoming events

SIPS Annual Lecture(12th June 2017, 4-6pm)

Speakers and details will be confirmed shortly. For the latest updates please visit our website www.shu.ac.uk/sips

2016 Research Activity HighlightsDepartment of Law and Criminology• Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Magna Carta

Fund [£170,000] to run a project designed to improve access to justice for women and girl victims of violence in three states in India under the auspices of the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice. The project will run for two years. (PI – Dr Sunita Toor)

CRESR (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research)• Trussell Trust More than Food Evaluation; Value:

£94,894; Funder: Trussell Trust; Lead: Ryan Powell. The key objective of the project is to provide Voluntary Action Sheffield and Sheffield City Council with a better understanding of the Sheffield Voluntary and Community Sector. An online ‘State of the Sector’ survey and an online survey on the subject of volunteering will be undertaken to achieve this aim.

• Ambrose, A., Damm, C., Foden, M., Gilbertson, J. and Pinder, J. (2016) Delivering Affordability Assistance to water customers: cross sector lessons. Consumer Council for Water

• Cole, I., Gilbertson, J. and Reeve, K. (2016) Evaluation of the prepaid card live test. Department for Work and Pensions

• Damm, C. and Sanderson, E. (2016) Sheffield State of the Voluntary and Community Sector 2016. Sheffield City Council & Voluntary Action Sheffield

• Rae, A., Hamilton, R., Crisp, R. and Powell, R. (2016) Overcoming deprivation and disconnection in UK cities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

• Reeve, K., Cole, I., Batty, E., Foden, M., Green, S. and Pattison, B. (2016) Home. No less will do: Homeless people’s access to the Private Rented Sector. Crisis

Department of the Natural and Built Environment• Lynn Crowe and Cate Hammond successfully bid

for a consultancy project to undertake research on the application of the Major Development Test (NPPF para.116) in English and Welsh National Parks, for the Campaign for National Parks, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, and the National Trust. Total fee – £7500. Work has progressed over the summer, with the Final report to be submitted – October 2016.

Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics• Lambros Lazuras; Awarded an International

Olympics Committee (IOC) grant on the perceived legitimacy of anti-doping policies. The project involves Germany (University of Munster), UK (Kingston University of London), Russia (Immanuel Kant University), Italy (Foro Italico University), Serbia (Serbian Anti-Doping Agency) and Greece. Total awarded 170.000 GBP for 18 months years of which 5500 GBP allocated to SHU.

Sheffield Institute of Education• DfE/Each; EACH Homophobic, biphobic and

transphobic bullying grant; Eleanor Formby

• DfE; Evaluation of progress towards an evidence based teaching system, including DfE’s role in facilitating progress; Mike Coldwell.

Contact details:Sheffield Institute for Policy StudiesSheffield Hallam UniversityHeart of the CampusSheffieldS10 2BR

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