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Working together to improve local policies

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Three women standing and chatting on steps outside a Victorian-style building with ornate stone architecture. The background shows the White Cloth building, pavement, and a cobbled road lined with modern shops.

The Yorkshire Policy Engagement Research Network (YPERN) is a Research England-funded initiative to deepen joint working between researchers and local policymakers in Yorkshire.

A team of Policy Fellows builds partnerships and connects academic research to policymakers at regional and local scales. It's designed to change how researchers and policy makers work together to develop inclusive, place-based policies across Yorkshire & the Humber.

The Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), builds on the strong connections established through YPERN.

YPIP is a co-produced collaboration that places marginalised and spatially isolated communities at the heart of regional decision-making, alongside policy and academic partners. Community voice is key across the YPIP’s work.

YPIP will use innovative approaches to empower low-income, marginalised and isolated communities confronting the challenges posed by climate change, widening inequality and left-behind places in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Professor Gary Dymski, Leeds University Business School
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Impact

  • Data analytics: builds the Yorkshire Engagement Portal – a data hub for the region to provide up-to-date, legitimate evidence about the region’s economic, social and environmental status.
  • Inclusive growth: uses inclusive business practices to increase entrepreneurial opportunities in the region, with a special focus on creating an Inclusive Business Network and improving creative opportunities for young people in Bradford
  • Sustainable living: addressing key regional challenges in the move to net zero carbon, including retrofit guidance for the region’s high proportion of older buildings and close collaboration with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission.

Key information

  • Major funders: Research England, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Research England Development (RED) Fund
  • Partners and collaborators: Yorkshire Universities, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission (YHCC), West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Leeds City Council, Wakefield Council, Bradford 2025, The Leap, Bradford Council, York Civic Trust, The Green Estate CIC, North Yorkshire Council
  • Disciplines: policy, community engagement, civic engagement
  • Leeds investigators: Gary Dymski, Andrew Brown, Holly Ingram, Lauren Cox, Lizzie Bonsor, Leslie Valencia.

Policy that centres people

Yorkshire’s universities are combining their expertise to co-develop policies that boost local communities.

Y-PERN puts academic experts around the table with local authorities, combined authorities, and local enterprise partnerships. This transformative way of working is designed to share knowledge and experiences while delivering innovative policy ideas that benefit communities and the places they live in.

Y-PERN’s activities include:

  • Working with councils to explore regional Areas of Research Interest
  • Supporting policy innovation partnerships to empower community voices in local policy making
  • Developing a portfolio of academic policy engagement training resources.

Y-PERN started during the COVID-19 pandemic, when two academics from the University of Leeds, Professors Gary Dymski and Andrew Brown, advised the West Yorkshire Combined Authority on a recovery strategy for the region.

With the support of Yorkshire Universities, a plan was devised to involve all the West Yorkshire universities in a new “place-based economic recovery network” – or PERN for short. The idea was to link academic personnel to provide verifiable and well-considered information about issues the council was facing.

In less than six weeks, workshops were underway. They provided rapid and accessible policy advice and possible next steps. PERN's success allowed the leadership to take it to the next level, and they were successful in a bid for £3.9 million from the Research England Development (RED) Fund.

Empowering marginalised communities

In February 2024, Yorkshire was named as the location for one of four Local Policy Innovation Partnerships, backed by nearly £20m from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to address regional inequalities.

YPIP, which stands for Yorkshire and Humber Policy Innovation Partnership, will build on the strong foundations already established via YPERN.

It will support inclusive and sustainable jobs, businesses, culture, and inclusive entrepreneurship with a focus on low-income, marginalised and isolated communities.

YPIP’s activities align with the theme of ‘communities in their places’, which reflects the project’s commitment to ensuring that all regional voices are heard. Research will be ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ people.

At its heart will be the YPIP community panel – 12 community members with diverse experiences of disadvantage, marginalisation or isolation. They will sit alongside key policymakers and researchers as equal partners and decision makers.

Professor Dymski from Leeds University Business School is leading the project with co-director Kersten England CBE, who is now heading up Bradford City of Culture 2025 after stepping down as chief executive of Bradford Council last year.

YPIP began with a first phase of community consultation, and thanks to collaborative efforts with the Leeds Social Sciences Institute in the UKRI funding bid, was the only English partnership to win funding from UKRI for a second phase.