Fit For Purpose Issue #3 - Delivering on Purpose

BUS I N ESS N EWS

FIT FOR

#03 CAMPUS CATALYST

CREATING BRIGHTER FUTURES

PROFESSOR KATHRYN MITCHELL UNIVERSITY OF DERBY

CHALLENGING DEEP-ROOTED INEQUALITIES

WITH ALEX FLEMING THE ADECCO GROUP

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

WITH PROFESSOR STEPHEN EAMES, HUMBER, COAST AND VALE HEALTH AND CARE PARTNERSHIP

WITH RT HON LORD WALNEY

LEADING THE CHARGE WITH BASIL SCARSELLA UK POWER NETWORKS

ENERGISING THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA

BETH KNIGHT AMA ZONIAN ’S MIS S ION T O CLOS E T H E OPPOR TU NIT Y GAP

DANIEL HARRISON E N D ING T HE D I GI TA L DIV IDE I N F IN A NC E

RRP £3.99

Delivering on Purpose

WITH KERRY DRYBURGH, BP

FFP-ISS03-2022

DANUTA GRAY T HE DIR E C T RO U T E T O LE V E LLING U P

STEVE MURRELLS SPO T LIG HT ON CO - O P

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University Best Practice WHITE PAPER

Our University Best Practice White Paper sets out just some of the

actions and projects that are having a direct impact on creating a version of Britain that truly has equality of opportunity

Find out more: www.levellingupuniversitiescoalition.org

EDITOR’S NOTE

Director of the Purpose Coalition; Lord Walney is a former Labour MP, the UK government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption appointed

by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and sits as a non-aligned peer in the House of Lords.

Guest Editor LORD WALNEY

With the government’s long anticipated Levelling Up White Paper now published, it is worth reflecting on how much the landscape has changed since it was first mooted. Expectations were sky high for the Government’s levelling up agenda back in December 2019, when Boris Johnson’s administration won its mandate to govern. The Conservatives’ victory in swathes of new territory, including Barrow and Furness where I had been the MP, was at least partly due to the sense that this was a government that was serious about bringing positive social change to disadvantaged areas.

More than two years down the line and optimism is in shorter supply. COVID-19 has taken its toll on some of our wealthiest cities as well as, inevitably, on our least advantaged towns. What the pandemic has really underlined, however, is how hard a task it is genuinely to level up the country. There is no one-size-fitsall solution. It’s a problem that policy experts, businesses and local leaders have grappled with for decades, with little lasting success.

This is surely a moment for a determined, sustained and bold focus on what could genuinely make a difference. Otherwise, it will never be possible to reverse the downward trajectories of some of our most left behind communities. The Centre for Cities recently warned that Britain has been levelled in the wrong direction. It was prosperous locations, north and south, that were the hardest hit during the pandemic. Businesses in London and Birmingham, for example, lost the equivalent of almost a full year of trading in less than two years. They are likely to be more resilient and retain their successful status relatively quickly as visitors and commuters return. Other cities that saw a significant increase in vacant shops,

TOWN CENTRES NE E D T O B E T H E F O C U S OF THE LEVELLING UP AG E N DA including Oxford and Newcastle, may take longer to recover. The danger is that the very poorest locations like Stoke and Sunderland may never be able to make up the ground they’ve lost. That would see whole communities permanently blighted, and the levelling up agenda fundamentally undermined.

I hope that we will now see much of the decision making handed over to local business, council and community leaders who already have an understanding of their area and the problems it faces. But it also provides a sense of the Government’s ambition not only to shape the levelling up agenda, but particularly to drive footfall back into town centres. That means a willingness to put financial incentives on the table to encourage businesses to remain there and to take difficult decisions to resist superficially attractive out-of-town schemes that only serve to hollow out our communities.

Part of this must surely be a more serious and fundamental rethink of the way we use our town centres than previous exercises to reimagine high streets in recent years. An empty shop should not just be seen as a sign of failure.

It can also be an opportunity. For example, health leaders should be systematically looking at moving key services, including vaccination programmes, into high street premises that have

recently been vacated by corporate clients.

The NHS could widen the range of services it provides, helping to support and participate in the design of healthy communities. Similarly, schools, colleges and universities should consider repurposing former department stores to transform the buildings into classrooms, laboratories and lecture theatres.

More broadly, this can only work if government shares the aim goal. Again, easy for any administration to state, much harder to change cultures so it can be delivered. Michael Gove will need to deploy all his authority and skill as a cross-cutting leader and ensure that every Whitehall department prioritises town centre revitalisation when it is making key spending decisions. For all the innovations like ‘tsars’, canbinet enforcers, a beefed-up Number Ten and audits on various issues, silo-working is still deeply embedded in government departments. They are often too preoccupied with delivering on their own core mission to also take on key performance indicators imposed from elsewhere.

It can be done. Ultimately, if as a country we value having thriving, vibrant town centres which offer opportunity to individuals and businesses and a beating heart for communities, we need to make this a priority.

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PLAYING OUR PART As we emerge from the unique challenges presented by the Coronavirus pandemic, Cardiff Met is ready to help support business and industry, communities and local economies across Wales and the wider world.

Since the outset of the pandemic, colleagues at Cardiff Met have worked harder, faster and longer than ever to use their skills and influence to help others. This valuesdriven approach, which has seen Cardiff Met named The Times Higher Education UK and Ireland University of the Year 2021 as well as The Times and The Sunday Times Welsh University of the Year 2021, will continue long after the pandemic has been brought under control.

Cardiff Met will continue to work in partnership with businesses, support more graduate entrepreneurs, collaborate on vital research projects and help our partners embrace innovation to address the challenges of a changing world.

With graduates equipped with skills for the future and research and innovation activity to generate new businesses and new jobs, Cardiff Met is not only ready to play its part in the economic recovery of post-Covid Wales and the wider world but is integral to that recovery.

www.cardiffmet.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF THE YEAR

FIT FOR Steve Hare

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AT S AG E

Steven Cooper CBE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AT ALDERMORE GROUP

Alex Fleming

REGION PRESIDENT OF N OR THERN EUROPE AT ADECCO

Monica Ariño

DIRECT OR OF PUBLIC POLICY AT AMAZON UK & IREL AND

Syreeta Brown

THIS MONTHS FEATURED PURPOSE BUSINESS LEADERS

GROUP CHIEF PEOPLE & COMMUNIC ATIONS OFFICER AT VIRGIN MONEY

Simon Boss

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF SHOOSMITHS

Steve Murrells

Penny James

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF DIRECT LINE GROUP

Susan Davy

Daniel Harrison CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF TRUE PO TENTIAL

Kerry Dryburgh

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE CO-OPERATIVE GROUP

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF PENN ON

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, PEOPLE & CULTURE AND CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER OF BP

Harry Hyman

Graeme Boylen

Rhodri Thomas

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF PRIMARY HEALTH PROPER TIES

HR DIRECT OR OF TARMAC

MAN AGING DIRECT OR OF REED IN PAR TNERSHIP

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PUTTING BUSINESSES IN THE DRIVING SEAT FOR CHANGE

With Rt Hon Justine Greening

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WHITEHALL NEEDS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO THAT MAYORS CAN GET ON WITH LEVELLING UP With Rt Hon Justine Greening

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TAKING HEALTHCARE ENVIRONMENTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL In Conversation with Harry Hyman

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IN CONVERSATION WITH JACKY KELLY

(Weil Gotshal & Manges) With Justine Greening 18

ENDING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN FINANCE

By Daniel Harrison

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LEVELLING UP MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING With Robbie Moore MP and Seema Kennedy OBE

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TAPPING INTO TALENT WITH TRUE POTENTIAL

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ETHNIC MINORITY MONITORING IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

POOR LIFE EXPECTANCY RATES ARE A STARK ILLUSTRATION OF HEALTH INEQUALITY With Rt Hon Anne Milton

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With Tarmac 50

With Lord Walney

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BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IS ESSENTIAL FOR LEVELLING UP ALL OUR COMMUNITIES

With Lord Walney 26

REPORTING BACK: LEVELLING UP IN KEIGHLEY With Robbie Moore MP

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WHERE YOU LIVE CAN AFFECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

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In conversation with Luke Evans MP 38

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A PERFECT STORM FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS IN THE WORKPLACE With Seema Kennedy OBE

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EQUALITY OF ACCESS MUST APPLY TO NHS WAITING LISTS With Rt Hon Anne Milton

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TRANSFORMING THE EARLY YEARS

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SPOTLIGHT ON

Steve Murrells and Co-op

HOW CAPITAL ASSET IS CHANGING LIVES ACROSS LONDON With Barts Health NHS Trust

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PURPOSEFUL ACTION ON THE FRONTLINE

With Greg Austen and Sodexo

LEVELLING UP AWARD WINNER

Chloe Jones and Compass Group UK & Ireland 46

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ENERGISING THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA: In conversation with Kerry Dryburgh of BP

HOW FRESH COLLABORATION IS CHALLENGING DEEP-ROOTED INEQUALITIES

With Professor Stephen Earnes of Humber, Coast and Vale Integrated Care System

WOMEN IN WESTMINSTER With Claire Coutinho MP

JUSTINE VISITS

Liverpool John Moores University and Professor Mark Power

Rt Hon Dame Andrea Leadsom MP

With Seema Kennedy OBE

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GAINING MOMENTUM ON BODY IMAGE

LEVELLING UP IN CONSTRUCTION

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LEADING THE CHARGE

In conversation with UKPN CEO Basil Scarsella - UKPN with Rt Hon Justine Greening

U CAN UCAS!

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With Make Happen

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HOW AN NHS TRUST MOBILISED TO GET TOUGH ON HEALTH INEQUALITY

With Dr Shane Gordon and ESNEFT

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TAPPING INTO THE POWER OF PURPOSE NO HALF MEASURES FOR YORKSHIRE CHANGEMAKER

WIDENING HIGHER EDUCATION PARTICIPATION IN THE NORTH EAST

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SPOTLIGHT ON

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Adele Barker and Pennon Group

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SAILING AHEAD

SPREADING OPPORTUNITY TO ALL

With Professor Liz Barnes and Staffordshire University 90

IN CONVERSATION WITH

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In conversation with with Ellinor Davey

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CREATING BRIGHTER FUTURES

A CENTRE FOR LEVELLING UP

132

In conversation with Alex Fleming

A COMMITMENT TO EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY AND EQUALITY

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BUILT TO LAST -

In conversation with Sarah Taylor ans Eabah Elliott

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HOW CISCO IS CLOSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

In conversation with David Meads

A DISRUPTIVE INFLUENCE With Steven Cooper, Aldemore Bank

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LEVEL UP FINANCE TO LEVEL UP THE COUNTRY

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PUTTING PURPOSE INTO PRACTICE In conversation with Simon Boss

IN CONVERSATION WITH A LEGAL SECTOR CHANGEMAKER

In conversation with Colin Passmore 144

"WE'RE REINVENTING WHAT BANKING MEANS IN THIS NEW ECONOMY"

In conversation with Syreeta Brown 146

RESPONSIBLE GATELEY USING THE LEVELLING UP GOALS TO MANAGE CHANGE

THE DIRECT ROUTE TO LEVELLING UP In conversation with Danuta Gray

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO HIGHER EDUCATION

BUILT TO LAST INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND LEVELLING UP

"PURPOSE IS UNBELIEVABLY POWERFUL, BUT WE HAVE LIMITED BANDWIDTH"

In conversation with David Pryce

REMAPPING THE ROUTE INTO THE LEGAL PROFESSION

In conversation with Charles Heppenstall

With Rod Waldie

Professor Mark Smith from the University of Southampton

EASING THE PATH TO A CAREER IN LAW

With Baroness Helen Newlove and the University of Bolton

In conversation with Neil Matin With Rt Hon Justine Greening

With Professor Karen Stanton and Solent University

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Rt Hon Justine Greening

LEVELLING UP FOR 180 YEARS

With Professor Rob Warner of Plymouth Marjon University

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108

CAMPUS CATALYST

With Professor Kathryn Mitchell and the University of Derby

In conversation with Beth Knight - Amazon

Q & A WITH AMANDA CUSDIN

With Professor Karen Bryan and York St John University

PLOTTING A COURSE FOR A FAIRER SOCIETY

With Cllr Nick Kelly and Plymouth City Council

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AMAZONIAN’S MISSION TO CLOSE THE OPPORTUNITY GAP

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THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY

With the University of Worcester

LEVELLING UP LAW

With Karen Jones and the University of Northampton

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With Professor Graeme Atherton and the University of West London

With Professor Andrew Wathey of Northumbria University

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THE ROLE OF LEADERS IN ACHIEVING EQUALITY, THROUGH DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

GIANT STEPS IN ADDRESSING INEQUALITY In conversation with Monica Arino

With Professor Shirley Congdon and the University of Bradford

With Martin Barkley and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust

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CASE STUDY

Elizabeth Takyi from the University of Greenwich

With Paula Graham and NI Water

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120

With Professor Val Braybooks and the University of Lincoln

WORLD HOMELESS DAY With Network Rail

THE HEART OF THE FOOD MANUFACTURING SECTOR

CONTENTS

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148

Rt Hon Justine Greening

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IS ESSENTIAL FOR LEVELLING UP ALL OUR COMMUNITIES

With Lord Walney 92

NEW REPORT HIGHLIGHTS ACTION NEEDED TO TACKLE SOCIAL MOBILITY With Professor Kiran Trehan and the University of York

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TRANSFORMING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES

In conversation with Rhodri Thomas with Rt Hon Justine Greening

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GB RAILFREIGHT SIGNS UP TO LEVELLING UP GOALS with CEO John Smith

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RT HON JUSTI N E G R E E N I NG

Putting businesses in the driving seat for change

THERE WAS A CLEAR SIGNAL FROM THE UK GOVERNMENT AT COP 26 THAT IT EXPECTS B U S I N E S S E S T O P L AY A L E A D I N G RO L E W H E N I T CO M E S T O TAC K L I N G C L I M AT E C H A N G E .

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RT HON JUSTI N E G R E E N I NG

The Chancellor announced at the COP 26 summit that financial institutions and companies listed on the London Stock Exchange will have to show how they intend to hit climate change targets.

The most notable element was that, under new Treasury rules, they will have to publish plans by 2023 detailing how they will move to a low-carbon future that aligns with the UK’s 2050 net zero target. It will be up to firms and their shareholders to decide how they will adapt to the transition but they will have to include targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was a defining moment. Essentially, Ministers have indicated that they want a more formal approach which reflects the reality that businesses as well as government have a lead in driving the ‘E’ of the Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) agenda.

But it also tells us what the direction of travel is likely to be in another important area - levelling up. This Government has not one but two key objectives - net zero and levelling up - effectively mirroring ESG in a set of political priorities for the first time ever.

Like net zero, levelling up and achieving equality of opportunity are driven not just by Government but by businesses and employers. Government has shown it understands that when it comes to climate change, many of the levers of change are outside Whitehall, in board rooms around the country. The same truth holds for achieving levelling up too.

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Like net zero, levelling up and achieving equality of opportunity are driven not just by Government but by businesses and employers.

It is easy to see Ministers considering a similar parallel approach for levelling up, the ‘S’ element of ESG, as well as net zero, the E bit. And with a White Paper on Levelling Up due at the beginning of next year, it could happen very soon.

That is why the Levelling Up Goals work of the Purpose Coalition is so important - the 14 Levelling Up Goals essentially define the distinct elements of the ‘S’ bit of ESG and provide the common framework that business needs for taking targeted and measurable action on equality of opportunity. The Levelling Up Goals architecture has already been adopted by FTSE 100 companies and major organisations like, Amazon, Direct Line, Centrica, UK Power Networks, the Co-op, to name just a few.

Gateley plc has already issued its first corporate responsibility plan shaped by the Levelling Up Goals. And the framework is being used beyond the private sector, by public sector organisations such as NHS Trusts, the BBC and local authorities. It means they can develop plans that focus efforts on the key elements of levelling up where their organisations can have the biggest impact - whether Successful school years (Goal 2), Fair career progression (Goal 6), Good health and wellbeing (Goal 8), Closing the digital divide (Goal 10) or any of the other 14 Goals. It also enables them to work more readily with other organisations on the Levelling Up Goals they have in common and have made a priority, as well as sharing best practice on what works.

As with avoiding ‘greenwashing’ on net zero, the Levelling Up Goals are about going beyond more traditional corporate CSR setting out clear, substantive plans for internal as well as external actions that mean the organisation itself can show how it can be a real engine of social mobility.

Using the Goals to focus on the social part of a company’s ESG strategy puts that business and organisation ahead of where the likely Government policy agenda will go.

At COP 26 it became clear how important it is for Ministers to be able to see all major organisations demonstrating clear plans that they are part of the solution in achieving net zero. It may only be a matter of time before Ministers are also asking them to produce similar plans on their social impact and levelling up. By using the Levelling Up Goals, it means business is getting ahead of the curve and crucially showing the leadership on levelling up that not only Ministers but also the public want to see.

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RT HON JUSTI N E G R E E N I NG

The Levelling Up White Paper is here.

What does it mean?

T H E L E V E L L I N G U P W H I T E PA P E R R E C E N T LY L AUNCHED BY MICHAEL GOVE IS AN OVERDUE BUT IMPORTANT DOCUMENT FOR BORIS JOHNSON’S GOVERNMENT WHICH HAS PL ACED LEVELLING UP AT THE HEART OF ITS POLITIC AL NARRATIVE. The reality is that for all the Prime Minister’s challenges of partygate, for many first time Conservative voters in Red Wall Tory seats in particular, it is the level of ambition in this policy document and whether it can be effectively delivered on the ground that could deliver redemption for Boris Johnson’s premiership.

Communities in many parts of the country who have felt left behind have had decades of promises of brighter futures from politicians in Whitehall, but too often and in too many places they’ve not been matched with reality or comprehensive plans.

For that reason alone, this is a Levelling Up White Paper that should be welcomed. It is a step in the right direction and it does represent the right multi-faceted, cross-Government approach needed for a chance of success in achieving equality of opportunity.

In recent years, outside of Westminster there has been a growing coalition of leaders in the private and public sectors who are all committed to improving social mobility and spreading opportunity. Many of those organisations, whether businesses, universities, NHS Trusts or local councils, have steadily set out their own plans to drive better access to

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opportunities using an independent, consistent architecture we call the Levelling Up Goals. It’s how we’ve broken down the systemic challenges of levelling up to be able to tackle them, and it’s promising to see this reflected in the Government’s approach.

On specifics, there is a welcome return of more Opportunity Areas, now rebadged as Education Investment Areas. As a place-based approach to driving up education standards through working both inside and outside schools on localised education priorities, it paid dividends on literacy and numeracy improvements in places like Bradford and Doncaster during my time as Secretary of State for Education.

And putting local government formally at the heart of tailoring local approaches on levelling up is also a sensible step that recognises the reality that different places face different levelling up challenges.

However, clear risks also remain for Boris Johnson and his newly launched levelling up plan.

Firstly, the Treasury ‘whatever it takes’ mantra on investment for getting through the pandemic is yet to translate across to the challenge of levelling up. It should do, because investment in raising and realising people’s potential is in all our interests, especially as the economic impacts of long-term skills shortages become ever clearer.

Secondly, as I know from my time as a Secretary of State running three different departments, the risk is this cross-cutting strategy is technically owned by everyone in Government, but delivered by no one.

Thirdly, the fact is that the electoral clock keeps ticking. Britain’s status quo is being a country with endemic inequality of opportunity. Levelling up is about fixing that. Time is running out for Johnson’s Government to show it is making a real difference.

RT HON JUSTI N E G R E E N I NG

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P R I M A RY H E A LT H P R O P E R T I E S

Taking healthcare environments to the next level HARRY HYMAN IS CEO OF PRIMARY HEALTH PROPERTIES (PHP), THE LEADING INVESTOR IN MODERN HEALTHC ARE PROPERTIES IN THE UK AND IREL AND. HERE HE SHARES HOW THE FIRM WILL CONTRIBUTE TO THE NHS LEVELLING UP PL AN IN SHAPING HEALTHC ARE SPACES.

Tell us more about PHP and what your role entails as CEO

HH: PHP has a simple mission to provide modern and fit-forpurpose properties that the NHS can deliver primary healthcare from. The idea came to me more than 25 years ago when I discovered how important GPs were in the delivery of primary care in the UK. I felt there was an interesting opportunity for investors to be the provider of the social infrastructure and real estate - and to leave the delivery of healthcare to the experts in the NHS. We have more than 500 primary care buildings across the UK and, in addition, we have 19 properties in Ireland. We are lucky enough to live in a society where people are living longer but we have a growing population and incidence of chronic disease.

This puts huge stress on the healthcare sector.

One of the best ways of dealing with that from an economic and patient satisfaction standpoint is to provide more services out of primary care properties. In terms of levelling up, some areas of this country need the most social infrastructure because they are the most deprived and disadvantaged, which makes our mission very important. After all, by providing essential social infrastructure, we can help not only with the delivery of care but by stopping people from falling ill in the first place.

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All of this requires space which is why we are encouraging the development of larger medical centres across the UK. For many people, home working is becoming more of a part of life now. This presumably changes the dynamics of how people can access their healthcare? Would the centres you are talking about make it easier for people to engage?

It would be wrong to say the pandemic hasn’t had a disruptive impact on GPs, and Zoom consultations will still have their place. However, in the initial triage and assessment when you are dealing with people who have complex comorbidities, GPs are very reluctant to do a diagnosis over the telephone. You can find out so much more by holistically seeing the patient.

This means that more of the initial triage consultations will be done over Zoom but it doesn’t reduce the space for follow-ups. The pandemic has changed this, which to a certain extent is good, but it doesn’t remove the need for ancillary accommodation. One of the big changes we

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PHP has a simple mission to provide modern and fit-for-purpose properties

are going to get through the health and social care bill going through parliament currently will be staff coming out of the hospital and being put into the primary care network.

Most primary care centres in Ireland have a mental health facility within them. We are beginning to see this as a trend within the UK. The pandemic has placed a huge amount of stress on people with the take up of mental health services being large, but a lot of that can be done from the primary care centres, provided they are big enough.

P R I M A RY H E A LT H P R O P E R T I E S

How has Covid-19 impacted on space for healthcare?

One of the things that strikes me as bizarre is that even today there are several medical centres where it’s impossible to even have a blood test. A patient is required to go to another medical centre or hospital to have that done. The pandemic shone a spotlight on the need to have a robust health service and how important it is to keep the expensive, inflexible hospital structures to deal with severely ill patients. It’s important not to clog up the hospital throughputs with the walking wounded people who have minor injuries or could be dealt with at an open centre.

Tell us a little bit more about how PHP works on levelling up?

In a way, it’s all to do with evidence, as the poorest parts of the country have the biggest healthcare problems. That is because a lot of healthcare follows socioeconomic awfulness.

It’s not a surprise that old mining communities or steel towns have the biggest problems because of the levels of unemployment and social deprivation.

This can be addressed and it is important to us at PHP that we play our role in beginning this investment in infrastructure.

This is a crucial part of what we do, so we want to see investment in less well-off areas of the country.

What are your reflections on life as an entrepreneur?

You have to be quite brave and make the decision that you are going to go for it then commit for a while to give it a chance to work. We sit here today with £2.7bn worth of property which seems like a long way from when we first started. I am eternally grateful to my initial backers for helping me to get it off the ground.

When we became a public company, we went to the market and had £5m worth of property. Our initial fundraise was £20m. There have been several ups and downs since then, including surviving the global financial crisis which was not easy to do but we got through it.

If you have a good idea, then you’ll find someone to back it up. We live in a very entrepreneurial society where there are vast amounts of capital to be deployed. It’s a great time for people to set off down the road, but you need a proper professional background to give you the confidence to see your idea through. Don’t be afraid of the stumbling blocks in your way as Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was PHP.

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WEI L GOTSHAL & MANG ES

The levelling up legacy born in the Big Apple that’s shaping bright futures in Britain I N 19 3 0 S N E W Y O R K , T H R E E L A W Y E R S , F R U S T R A T E D B Y A L A C K O F O P P O R T U N I T Y I N L A W , D E C I D E D T O C R E AT E T H E I R O W N F I R M . T O DAY T H I S E M P I R E , W E I L G O T S H A L & M A N G E S , CO N T I N U E S T O D R I V E S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y A N D I S N O W P L AY I N G A RO L E I N L E V E L L I N G U P T H E U K .

Jacky Kelly was part of the team that first built up its London office, after its move in 1996 to take on the City’s old established order.

Here Jacky, now partner and head of London structured finance and derivatives, talks to Rt Hon Justine Greening about the battle to open up legal opportunities to all and how firms in the sector can be more purposeful.

JG: Tell us a little bit about your role and the wider firm JK: We’re a New York-headquartered, Wall Street law firm with over 1000 lawyers worldwide and offices across the US, Europe, and Asia. Our biggest office outside the US is London.

We were founded in the 1930s in New York, by three guys who were highly qualified themselves, but just couldn’t get any

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traction at the dominant ‘white shoe’ law firms so they set up their own firm. The London office was set up in 1996. It was a relatively unknown firm, and it was unheard of to set up a critical mass of English lawyers in London to try to compete with the magic circle firms who were so dominant. We were ambitious and poached a team of 20 English lawyers and set up a very credible office and really shook things up. In terms of my role, structured finance is essentially a way of corporates and financial institutions raising money on an asset-backed basis. This can include mortgages and consumer assets, but also looks at quite esoteric assets, like sports revenues and broadcasting rights. I was attracted by the opportunity to join something which was really a start-up in London, but obviously backstopped by a big US law firm. We knew we had to make it successful on a self-standing basis, so it was quite exciting and very different.

WEI L GOTSHAL & MANG ES

What does levelling up mean for you as a business today – and how well do you think the legal sector generally is contributing to it?

The legal sector has been very conscious of the need to provide fair access and wider entry into law. Firms have individually been pursuing their own initiatives, very successfully in some cases, to attract a broader pool of talent. To create real change in an industry, you need a lot of firms to be pushing in the same direction. Because of our unique culture, and because of the fact we’re relatively small compared to some of our peers, we’re able to take action and implement initiatives quite quickly.

There are a number of strands, the most obvious one being how to make sure as a firm we are providing access and widening entry to the profession. It cannot be that postcode, education or parental occupation should still be obstacles to getting jobs in law and progressing in it.

We do a lot of work with organisations such as Aspiring Solicitors where we can provide mentoring, training and work experiences to working class students to help give them a peek behind the curtain. I think this outreach piece is really important. I was in this position myself, where you don’t actually know what being a lawyer is about if you’ve got no family background, friends, acquaintances or contacts in it - or if your school can’t set you up with work experience. You really don’t know what it is you’re aiming to be.

Therefore, when you go to apply for jobs, you don’t really know what it is you’re trying to get across to the people interviewing you.

Outreach, bringing in university students and schoolchildren and giving them a taste of office life and talking them through what we do here, is vital to get the message out. Within our office, it’s not just a lawyer-led activity. Our business services people are really engaged in this as well and really support the effort.

The legal sector is in quite a unique position because you can help on levelling up through pro bono activities and giving back. We take that very seriously. We advised the Social Investment Business on £30m worth of emergency loans for charities and social enterprises during the pandemic. We’ve also done a lot of work with people with low incomes who can’t afford legal advice, who maybe have had an unfair hand dealt to them.

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to create real change in an industry, you need a lot of firms to be pushing in the same direction 15

WEI L GOTSHAL & MANG ES Culture is really important in levelling up as it sets the context for what happens day to day in any business. How does your company culture support social mobility?

It’s important that fairness and inclusion, and a culture that encourages people to be the best they can be, are put in place. I think every organisation can do better, but that is our objective, and we have a lot of initiatives and strategies that support this ambition. In terms of culture, we have a very strong emphasis at partner level on mentoring. Everybody in the office can have a mentor including business services people as well as lawyers. We also have a reverse mentoring programme, where the lawyers are mentoring the partners on some issues and explaining to them how it is to be them, challenging us and putting us in their shoes.

It’s quite easy, once you’ve become a partner, to imagine that you understand everything, but you really need to keep an open mind, listen to people’s experiences and take the feedback on board to see how we can improve.

We also have a very strong continuing education piece. We regularly have external speakers talking about race, class, gender and other inclusion issues, which are open to the

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entire firm and are very well received. Partners are encouraged to participate in continuing education, including around unconscious bias and how we could do things differently.

There’s a very strong message from leadership that these things are important and should be taken as being as important as client facing and transactional work.

Companies that are more diverse and have better cultures as you have described are better places to work. As a result, people prefer to join them, and they become a self-fulfilling virtuous circle. Do you agree that this approach is a very sensible business strategy – as well benefitting society and helping to level up Britain?

Yes, I 100 per cent agree with that. There are very strong business drivers to take this seriously because, as lawyers, we’re a service industry and we’ve got to deliver the best possible advice and solutions to the client. By definition, having a variety of perspectives and experiences puts us in a much better position to do that. Obviously, the wider the talent pool, the better we’re going to be. I also think clients are demanding this. Most clients, when they have panel appointment processes

WEI L GOTSHAL & MANG ES

“

Partners are encouraged to participate in continuing education, including around unconscious bias and how we could do things differently

[selecting a list of go-to firms for legal services], ask for very granular information about a firm’s inclusion strategies and stats as to the makeup of the workforce. Obviously, technical excellence and transaction experience are important.

But equally important for a number of organisations is commitment to inclusion and diversity and having a diverse workforce. They are looking for their lawyers to match their own ambitions, and also their own workforce. The way clients are engaging with this is pushing even the most reluctant law firms into realising these things are extremely important. As well as being the right thing to do, it is extremely good for business and improves our competitive advantage.

To meet this demand from clients, attracting diverse talent is one challenge, but is retention - and ensuring diversity is able to flow upwards through the organisation – even more difficult?

Yes, the attraction side is being dealt with very well, and firms are looking much more broadly in terms of the people they would consider for jobs. We’ve got blind CVs, contextualised recruitment, looking beyond Russell Group universities and

bringing people in from non-technical backgrounds to see what being a lawyer is about. Also, giving them some preparation for interviews. So yes, we do pretty well on the attraction front.

But retention is more challenging. Law firms are behind other sectors, for example accountancy, in terms of monitoring what actually happens to [individuals] as they progress within the firm. Anecdotally, law firms do lose people along the way, largely because they don’t necessarily feel that they fit. We need to start gathering data on the socio-economic makeup of the workforce, tracking progression on an individual basis and considering things like pay gaps and opportunities to progress to partnership [level]. We are doing that here and I think other law firms are probably doing the same.

We are trying really hard to make sure, as well as attracting the best talent, we retain it, and we have a number of initiatives in place to deal with that.

Mentoring, reverse mentoring and sponsorship are definitely a big part of it. We also have a very strong focus on work allocation. One of the things that comes up regularly from people from working class backgrounds when they leave [a firm] is the feeling that ‘I was never put on that great deal or involved in that high profile case. I felt like I missed out on the best opportunities’.

While lawyers don’t like to be pushed into formalising things like work allocation, as a firm we’ve decided it is very important.

We have a work allocation system where people record what they’re doing on a weekly basis, what capacity they’ll have and what they want to work on. As partners, we’re accountable. If someone clearly has time, but we choose to put someone else on the transaction who is much busier, we’ve got to explain that.

We also try to do as much as we can around common opportunities, including training of soft skills. Often, I think law firms look for the end product – the polish. We should be focusing on the potential and the talent, and the polish can come through experience.

I didn’t have any of the required polish when I started. I really did not enjoy the idea of presenting or walking into room and taking control of the situation. These are things you learn, and you start to just get a bit more comfortable in your own skin.

Online: To listen to our full interview with Jacky Kelly, featuring more insights on career progression in the legal sector, visit: www.fit-for-purpose.org/listen.

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TR UE POTENTIAL

By Daniel Harrison, True Potential Chief Executive 18

Ending the digital divide in finance P O L I T I C I A N S S T RU G G L E W I T H T E C H N O L O GY. WHETHER IT BE SOCIAL MEDIA REGUL ATION, M A K I N G B I G T E C H PAY T H E I R FA I R S H A R E I N TA X E S , OR UPSKILLING THE WORKFORCE, WE’VE WITNESSED POLICYMAKERS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATL ANTIC STRUGGLE TO COMMUNIC ATE A CONVINCING VISION FOR A MORE DYNAMIC AND HARMONIOUS DIGITAL WORLD.

And partly due to the past failures of our leaders to adequately prepare societies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, one of the lessons the pandemic has taught us is that, in many respects, we’re not as technologically advanced as we hoped we might be. With kids locked out of the classroom, too many parents struggled to get them online or connected to their schoolwork with a reliable internet connection.

It seemed to come as a surprise to some that many families made do with their cellular data plans to access education. And while companies like ours donated laptops to help ensure these children could continue with their studies, education is but one sector of our economy that risks cleaving society into two camps: the digital haves and the digital have nots.

That’s why we must make our society more digitally inclusive before tackling other inequalities – by putting everyone on an equal footing through access to technology and training, efforts to tackle inequalities in education, income and health will be boosted.

In the year 2022, not being connected means being left behind; no more so than in finance and personal investing, where more and more investment decisions are being made without the advice of a fellow human being. More importantly, those investment decisions have been made safer through the creation of diversified portfolios managed by experienced professionals, meaning it has never been easier to invest and generate a decent return.

The so-called democratisation of finance has now put the prospect of solid investment returns within the grasp of many more hands. That’s a good thing, too, seeing as many Britons still aren’t putting enough money away to save for their retirements, with the FCA currently warning that 1.7m people are missing out on wealth creation by holding excessive cash.

And what’s worse, millions of Britain’s sitting on these savings are likely to see their purchasing power eroded by inflation.

The savings gap is being fueled by a perception that investments are a preserve of, if not the rich, the middle class.

What many fail to perceive is that here, too, things are changing; not only has finance democratised, but the technology behind it has too. Platforms like True Potential’s have been designed to make investment easy; more importantly, our platform does not require users to have large amounts of money for an initial investment. One pound is all it takes. Even better, once people are set up, they can bank small amounts of disposable money and watch it grow over time.

With life returning to normal, it is now our collective responsibility to nudge more people across the digital divide in finance and ensure more families are doing what they can to build resilience in their personal finances. This can even start in schools, where both children and parents should really gain more access to digital skills and financial education. Meanwhile, businesses – particularly in the financial sector – have a responsibility to improve outreach to the financially excluded.

Let’s build a more financially inclusive society by bridging the digital divide. After that, the possibilities are endless.

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LEVELLI NG UP

Levelling Up Mental Health and Wellbeing WITH ROBBIE MOORE MP AND SEEMA KENNEDY OBE

MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING AFFECTS HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES, AND HOW WE ENVISAGE OUR FUTURE. POOR MENTAL HEALTH HAS A PROFOUND EFFECT ON OUR LIVES, AND HOW WELL WE CAN DO OUR JOBS.

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For too long, saying you need mental health support was seen to come with stigma - but one in four of us will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year, so it is vital the right kind of support is available.

Where you live can have a significant impact on mental health.

The latest GP Patient Report shows significantly higher numbers of people reporting mental health problems in West Yorkshire, compared to in London. Like so many other aspects of healthcare, those who live in the least privileged communities are too often the furthest away from getting the right help and treatment for poor mental health, which can have a devastating impact on people’s lives.

Stay at home orders and limited social contact throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened mental health outcomes. Improvement is vital to levelling-up and recovery from the pandemic.

Recently, Levelling Up Goals Parliamentary Co-Chair, Robbie Moore MP teamed up with former Public Health Minister Seema Kennedy OBE to host a Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit in Keighley.

The event brought together local and national leaders to discuss what more needs to be done to improve, and level-up mental health and wellbeing provision both in West Yorkshire, and across the country.

Nick Smith, founder of Missing Peace Wellbeing and Support a charity in Keighley - set out his journey from breaking point, to helping those who are suffering with their own mental health issues. The head of a local high school - Jon Skurr - explained the importance of looking after young people’s mental health, and ensuring the right support is available, whilst Patrick Scott - the Chief Operating Officer at the Bradford District Care Trust was there to listen to local concerns, and find out what more needed to be done by the NHS to improve.

LEVELLI NG UP

The audience, which included local charities, mental healthcare workers, and members of the public, explained their personal stories. There were some great examples of best practice but it was also clear that, for some, access to good quality, accessible provision is too difficult. All spoke convincingly about their personal experiences of tackling mental health in the local area what works well, and what more still needs to be done to break down some of the barriers that currently exist for those who are experiencing poor mental health.

Last year, NHS England published its plans to improve patient access to mental health services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. These include proposals to introduce five new waiting time guarantees, ensuring that patients who require urgent care will be seen by community health crisis teams within 24 hours of referral, with the most urgent cases getting help within four hours. Liaison services for those who end up in A&E departments would also be rolled out to remaining sites across the country.

Local businesses have a role to play too. In order to attract and retain the best talent, they need to offer effective support in the workplace while also reassuring their workforce that they can use those services without any repercussions for their careers, or fear of stigma. The pandemic has undoubtedly presented more challenges, especially for those in our least privileged communities, but it has also given organisations the chance to improve mental health provision at work.

Levelling Up Goal 8; Good Health and Wellbeing is a benchmark for businesses across the country to use to close gaps that prevent people from accessing opportunity.

Improving mental health provision is vital to levelling-up.

There is excellent work happening - but it is clear both government and employers need to put improving mental health provision at the forefront of their agenda.

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TR UE POTENTIAL

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Justine Greening finds out how the award-winning financial services group taps into talent with True Potential CEO, Daniel Harrison JG: Tell me about True Potential and how it’s contributing to the levelling up agenda

DH: True Potential was set up in Newcastle with two aims – to change the way wealth management is delivered and to be able to offer jobs in the financial services sector to anyone who had potential. Fourteen years later we are doing both.

Traditionally, wealth management was the preserve of the rich. Our mission was to help everyone, no matter what their background or how small their savings, to achieve financial security through saving and investing. Closing that savings gap is fundamental to levelling up the country, allowing people to access capital when and where they need it.

We also wanted to spread opportunity in an area where, historically, there hasn’t always been much around. There’s plenty of talent though and we’ve spent the last 14 years finding and developing it. That’s driven by our belief that there should be equal opportunity for everyone, with an individual’s success dependent only on their personal effort and talent and not on their background or where they are from. That’s why we were one of the first businesses to sign up to the Social Mobility Pledge when you launched it in 2018 with our chairman David Harrison, who also set up the Harrison Centre for Social Mobility in 2017. It completely aligned with our values and with our culture.

Why is the skills journey so important to the work that True Potential is doing?

In business we need to do two things to be effective. We need to upskill our new staff, providing them with the skills they need to get on and do the job they were recruited to do well. But we also need to reskill them to make sure that the whole workforce has skills which are relevant and up to date in a fast-changing world.

That way they’re able to move on to different jobs within the organisation and continue to progress. Some of those jobs won’t even have existed when they first started!

Skills are the difference between having a job and having a career.

It’s a win-win situation for the employee and the employer. If a person is committed to learning, that will open up opportunities wherever they work, bringing personal satisfaction and financial reward. It will also benefit the employer who has a motivated member of staff with the expertise required for the greener, high tech industries of the future.

At True Potential, we spend a lot of time looking for individuals who are interested in learning, who have the aptitude and who want to succeed. They may start off anywhere in the company but if they accumulate the right skills, the world’s their oyster. They can transfer to other parts of the business which they’re more interested in and where they feel their talents are more suited. It’s up to us as a business to work with them to identify those talents, even if they’ve sometimes been hidden in their previous roles, and then help develop them so they have a real chance of fulfilling their potential.

And that’s where the True Potential Academy comes in?

Yes, it’s all about developing our workforce’s skills to support their learning but also to support the main function of our business – delivering wealth management through the very latest technology.

The Academy takes on a cohort of people from various teams across the company each year and teaches them the basic tools and techniques of software development and coding through a variety of learning resources so that they can develop their skillsets on the job.

At the moment we have 48 full-time developers who build all the technology for the business. Half of them started life doing something different in other parts of the company such as reception or administration and the knowledge of the company they’ve accumulated over that time helps them to double down on their strengths. They learn on the job and the Academy helps to fine tune their skills so they can flourish and progress. An employee who is encouraged to challenge themselves and progress is a happy one and the company is the first beneficiary of that job satisfaction.

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L O R D WA L N E Y

Socio-economic monitoring is good for business M E A S U R I N G I S N O T O N LY A G O O D WAY O F C H E C K I N G H O W FA R YO U ’ V E CO M E B U T A L S O H O W FA R YOU S TILL HAVE T O GO. IT PROVIDES INF ORMATION BUT C AN AL SO INSPIRE ENCOURAGEMENT, DETERMINATION AND EVEN GOOD OLD-FASHIONED COMPETITIVENESS. IT’S ALSO FUNDAMENTAL T O C H A N G E , BY L O R D WA L N E Y. It’s very easy to commit to doing things better but being prepared to monitor what you are doing and publish the results is a much more honest and transparent indication of how well you are doing.

In business, that was illustrated by the many warm words around equality following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement last year. Many employers were quick to commit to a more inclusive approach but it is still hard to assess what has actually been achieved because so little data from companies is available.

With only 13 out of the 100 largest UK-listed employers currently revealing their ethnicity pay gaps, the view of the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD) is that progress has been too slow and too inconsistent.

I confess that I was sceptical of gender pay audits when they were being explored while I was an adviser in the Department for Business during the final term of the last Labour government, which lost office in 2010. But bluntly, the then Equalities Minister, Harriet Harman, was right and I was wrong.

The obligation to report on the gender pay gap, which was accepted and subsequently introduced by the Conservative Government, has started to make a difference. Mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff, it can provide information on how different groups are distributed across different pay bands and therefore how well a company is doing at attracting, retaining and progressing its staff.

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But we need to go further, faster. Attracting and retaining the best people for the job matters more than ever following the pandemic.

We need to make use of all the talent that exists in this country, with an acknowledgement that that is not just confined to certain schools, universities or social backgrounds. People with potential often have less traditional academic histories and unconventional back stories but have demonstrated qualities such as resilience and determination that make them good candidates for employment.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that most minority ethnic groups earned less on average than white British people. In England and Wales the ethnicity pay gap stands at 2.3%.

It varies markedly across the regions but the gap in London is currently 23.8%.

Lloyds of London recently announced that it will be setting an ethnicity target for the whole market with one third of all new employees to be from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

It is also aiming to achieve gender parity within ten years and has already set a target of 35% women in senior roles by the end of 2023 and 20% female representation on boards and executive committees.

This is a positive step but more businesses need to commit to measuring and publishing data so that current and potential employees, their clients and customers and their communities can judge for themselves on the progress made. It is only by creating fairer workplaces that we can kickstart real, long-term change.

L O R D WA L N E Y

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LEVELLI NG UP

Reporting back: Levelling Up in Keighley

BY ROBBIE MOORE MP

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LEVELLI NG UP

IN THIS ISSUE, ROBBIE MOORE - MP FOR KEIGHLEY AND PARLIAMENTARY CO-CHAIR OF THE LEVELLING UP GOAL S - EXPL AINS PROGRESS TAKING PL ACE TO LEVEL-UP ON THE GROUND. It is now just over two years since I was elected as Keighley and Ilkley’s MP in 2019. It was a dramatic election, and one in which I stood on a manifesto to level-up.

It is fair to say that there are a lot of people who ask me what levelling up means. It’s a phrase people know, but what does it mean to be ‘levelled-up’?

For me, levelling up means four key things - empowering local leaders and communities, growing the private sector to create more jobs, spreading opportunity, and restoring local pride.

Keighley is a town which has been forgotten and ignored for a very long time - and by all political parties. Sadly, too many in Westminster believe that the North stops at Manchester - but whilst that is not only untrue, there is a whole world of untapped talent waiting to be utilised.

As Keighley’s MP, I’ve made it my mission to stand up for my part of West Yorkshire, and lobby hard for our community. The good news is that in the last two years, we have started to see success.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly set us back, but it also provides new opportunities as we build back better.

People need positive destinations, good training, and the right advice and experiences. That’s why in Keighley, we’ve secured funding to create two new hubs; a new Skills Hub will deliver training in digital, communication and personal development, and a new Manufacturing, Engineering and Future Technology Hub to specialise in training local people in critical manufacturing and engineering skills, to help create more local jobs.

I’m delighted my local NHS trust - Airedale - is working so closely with the Levelling Up Goals on their own plan to level-up, because in my view, good health and wellbeing is of vital importance. As part of the Towns Fund, I’ve secured funding for a new Keighley Health and Wellbeing Centre to improve local services, and cut waiting times.

Work is beginning to improve local public transport infrastructure, to provide better and more reliable services - including the basics, like real time bus information.

Keighley is a former Mill Town with lots of unused brownfield sites.

These are prime for redevelopment, but it is too often more cost effective for developers to propose building on green spaces, rather than spending extra money regenerating these sites.

It is in situations like this where the government is right to step in and take action. That’s why I’ve secured £15m to create a new Development Investment Fund to bring these sites back into use, create new space for businesses to grow, as well as for new start-ups.

Our high streets have been battered in recent years - something which has only been made worse by the rise of online shopping and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our high streets and town centres need to be a place where people visit for enjoyment, not only to buy what is essential. That’s why I’ve secured money to regenerate parts of Keighley Town Centre, and for a major tree planting programme to make the community a place that can be enjoyed.

Across the country, communities with strong local leadership are being transformed. It isn’t easy, and the pandemic has without doubt delayed our plans, but we are seeing change, and it is clear the government is serious about the levelling-up agenda.

Robbie Moore is the Member of Parliament for Keighley and Ilkley

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S E E MA KE N N E DY

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S E E MA KE N N E DY

Where you live can affect your mental health WHERE YOU LIVE C AN HAVE A SIGNIFIC ANT IMPACT ON YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. LIKE MANY OTHER ASPECT S O F H E A LT H C A R E , T H E M E N TA L H E A LT H P I C T U R E VA R I E S AC RO S S T H E CO U N T RY. I T C A N A L S O VA RY W I T H I N REGIONS. BUT ALL TOO OFTEN IT MEANS THAT THOSE WHO LIVE IN THE LEAST PRIVILEGED COMMUNITIES A R E F U R T H E S T AWAY F RO M G E T T I N G T H E R I G H T H E L P A N D T R E AT M E N T F O R T H E P O O R M E N TA L H E A LT H WHICH C AN HAVE SUCH A DEVASTATING AND LONG-L ASTING IMPACT ON THEIR LIVES. In 2020, for example, estimated rates of mental disorder in children were 20.5% in the West Midlands but just half that in London. The North East continued to have the highest rate of suicide, as it has for five out of the last ten years, with 13.3 deaths per 100,000. This contrasts with the East of England which had 9.5 deaths per 100,000 and London which had 7.0, the lowest rate of any English region.

It has been shown that a higher use of mental health services is associated with a lower suicide rate. That illustrates how effective mental healthcare is not just about the provision of care, it’s also about the quality of that care, how accessible it is and how likely local communities are to use it.

Earlier this year, NHS England published its plans to improve patient access to mental health services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. These include proposals to introduce five new waiting time guarantees, ensuring that patients who require urgent care will be seen by community health crisis teams within 24 hours of referral, with the most urgent cases getting help within four hours. Liaison services for those who end up in A & E departments would also be rolled out to remaining sites across the country.

Alongside the NHS, employers also have a vital role to play in tackling mental health issues in our communities. In order to attract and retain the best talent, they need to offer effective support in the workplace while also reassuring their workforce that it can use those services without any repercussions for their careers, or fear of stigma. The pandemic has undoubtedly

presented more challenges, especially for those in our least privileged communities, but it has also given organisations the chance to improve mental health provision at work, using Levelling Up Goal 8 Good health and wellbeing as a benchmark to close the gaps that prevent people from accessing opportunity.

I recently joined Robbie Moore, MP for Keighley and Ilkley, on the panel for a Mental Health Summit in Keighley which aimed to encourage an open and frank discussion on levelling up health and wellbeing as well as the challenges of local mental health provision. We were also joined by Jon Skurr, Executive Headteacher at University Academy in Keighley, Patrick Scott, Chief Operating Officer at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust and Nick Smith from the community organisation, Missing Peace Wellbeing and Support. All spoke convincingly about their personal experiences of tackling mental health in the local area - what works well and what more still needs to be done to break down some of the barriers that currently exist for those who are experiencing poor mental health. There were some great examples of best practice but it was also clear that, for some, access to good quality, accessible provision is too difficult.

Our mental wellbeing can have a profound effect on our lives – on how we view ourselves and our future. It also has a crucial impact on how well we can do our jobs and on how successfully we can take advantage of the opportunities that will make a difference in life. It is a key element of levelling up the country as we recover from the pandemic, with the ambition that no one should suffer from poorer mental health because of where they live.

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S E E MA KE N N E DY

A perfect storm for young professionals in the workplace 30

S E E MA KE N N E DY

MENTAL WELLBEING AFFECT S HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES AND HOW WE ENVISAGE OUR FUTURE. POOR MENTAL HEALTH C AN HAVE A PROFOUND EFFECT ON OUR LIVES, INCLUDING HOW WELL WE CAN DO OUR JOBS. Research commissioned by the City Mental Health Alliance (CMHA) in partnership with Bupa, has found that the impact of social restrictions imposed during the pandemic and the new working patterns that were introduced, together with anxiety about climate change, has created a perfect storm for young people’s mental health.

A poll of 1000 professionals found that two thirds of young people believe that the state of their mental health affects their ability to do their jobs well and that being anxious or stressed has a direct impact on their concentration levels. One in five of those surveyed said it happened all the time or often while 41 per cent said it happened sometimes in the past year. Nearly a third took time off work as a result, either as sick leave or annual leave.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) have also highlighted the extent of the impact on the public’s mental health with one in six adults, 17 per cent, experiencing some form of depression this summer. Although that had fallen from the high of 21 per cent at the beginning of the year, it is still almost double the pre-pandemic figure of ten per cent.

Almost half of those surveyed in the CMHA research said that one of the most important things they look for in a prospective employer is the prioritisation of employees’ mental health and wellbeing. Sixty per cent said mental health support from their employer would help them work more effectively and 66 per cent said it would increase job satisfaction and the likelihood that they would stay with the company. They also wanted to see support services signposted from the first day of a new job. However, there was a significant caveat that young professionals would only feel comfortable using mental health services at work if they were sure that it would not impact their career.

There is a clear message here for employers. In order to attract and retain the best talent, they will need to provide effective support for mental wellbeing but also the reassurance that their workforce can feel confident in using it without repercussion or stigma.

Many businesses are already demonstrating that they understand that this is more important than ever in running a successful organisation where colleagues can thrive. Following COVID-19, they have recognised that looking after their staff’s mental health is as important as their physical health. That care can be offered in a number of ways including practical advice, implementing healthy work practices, mentoring and networking sessions where shared experience can be helpful, especially if senior staff are also willing to get involved.

A number of the organisations currently working with the Purpose Coalition are looking at wellbeing across their organisations.

Sodexo, for example, has recently rebranded its employee assistance programme with very positive feedback from staff who report they are more likely to use the current services than they would have been previously. The company has seen tangible results, with stress-related absences reduced from an average of 27 days to 14 days in 95% of cases where intervention took place as part of the programme from day one.

Another partner, the Co-op, has created a mental health toolkit designed to encourage colleagues to talk about mental health and to signpost support. It provides a free service for colleagues and family members, LifeWorks, to help with any situation that may be affecting their wellbeing. It also provides 24/7 access to a virtual GP which provides mental health support, nutrition and fitness consultations as well as second opinions.

That illustrates the very real difference that a focus on mental health at work can make, for the business and for its employees, at every level. Everyone in the workplace should feel comfortable having conversations about mental health. Young people have been particularly clear that it should be on the agenda in any organisation they work for. They want to see purposeful intention by businesses that will help to ensure more positive mental wellbeing and will make their job choices on that basis. Businesses which fail to deliver risk losing out on attracting and retaining the very best talent.

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A N N E M I LT O N

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A N N E M I LT O N

Equality of access must apply to NHS waiting lists WE KNOW THAT DURING COVID MANY PEOPLE FROM THE COUNTRY’S MORE DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITIES WERE HIT HARDES T. AND WE ARE NOW SEEING THOSE SAME COMMUNITIES BEING FURTHER DISADVANTAGED ON NHS WAITING LISTS. There are currently 5.6 million people waiting for NHS treatment, with some estimates suggesting that the backlog could increase to as many as 13 million over the coming months. Waiting lists in some areas have increased by as much as 90% between April 2020 and July 2021 while others increased by less than 10%. Whilst this does show that referral routes are working – people are coming forward who may not have done before - new research shows it is those people in the most deprived parts of England who are likely to have to wait longer for their treatment.

A report by the King’s Fund has found that a person living in one of the least advantaged areas is nearly twice as likely to have to wait more than a year - over 7% in the country’s poorest areas, compared to just 4% in more affluent areas. On average, waiting lists have grown by more than half in the most deprived areas, compared to a third in the least deprived.

People living in those communities already tend to have greater healthcare needs and poorer health outcomes. That pattern of health inequality was clear during the pandemic, with those from areas of most deprivation suffering from higher COVID-19 infection rates and higher mortality rates than the rest of the country. Before the pandemic, 9 out of 10 people were waiting fewer than 25 weeks in England, but that has now risen to 44 weeks. The impact of those longer waiting times has profound implications on health.

A poll by Healthwatch England has found that more than half of adults whose treatment had been delayed, said that the delay had affected their physical and mental health; and almost half said it affected their ability to work, impacting the financial and economic

security of individuals and the communities in which they live.

But some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have bucked the trend. Through collaboration and with prioritisation of those groups where the need is the greatest, the CCGs have been able to limit the number of people waiting more than a year, even in areas that are more deprived. This underlines what we already know about tackling inequality in health. It also reinforces what The Purpose Coalition has seen in its work with NHS Trusts and with health providers such as Virgin Care in Essex. Strong partnerships with local stakeholders together with the support of their local communities work, not only in healthcare but in areas such as education and employment.

Different parts of the country face different challenges. Even among the most disadvantaged communities a range of tailored solutions will be needed to help address the inequalities faced. Although a clichéd phrase - no one-size-fits-all – there is no doubt that the solutions that work are those that take into account local factors.

Local health services need to be given the power to operate based on their knowledge and experience of their local communities.

A poll from Ipsos Mori showed that the public’s top priority for the NHS is improved waiting times. The Government’s recently published Plan for Health and Social Care, endorsed by the Prime Minister in his conference speech, has pledged £36 billion over the next three years to provide what it calls ‘the biggest catchup programme in the history of the NHS’. Crucially this includes a commitment to offer more appointments, treatments and operations, with an increase to 110% of planned activity levels by 2023/24. A reduction in waiting times is a key ambition for the Government, and a crucial element of levelling up.

Governments are judged not on what they say but on what they do and what they achieve. The original architects of the NHS wanted healthcare no longer exclusively available to those who could afford it but available to all. And it will only be when we see better and sustained health outcomes for the least privileged, that we will also see that ambition realised, with equality of opportunity for all.

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A N N E M I LT O N

Poor life expectancy rates are a stark illustration of health inequality N O T H I N G I L L U S T R AT E S H E A LT H I N E Q U A L I T Y M O R E E F F E C T I V E LY T H A N T H E H U G E D I F F E R E N C E S I N L I F E E X P E C TA N C Y A C RO S S T H E C O U N T R Y. P U T B L U N T LY, W H E R E Y O U L I V E C A N H AV E A D I R E C T I M PA C T O N H O W LONG YOU LIVE. AND THE FIGURES ON HEALTHY LIFE YEARS DEMONSTRATE A SIMIL AR PICTURE. Despite most communities seeing their life expectancy increase in the years between 2002 and 2010, research by Imperial College London (Life expectancy and risk of death in 6791 communities in England from 2002 to 2019: high-resolution spatiotemporal analysis of civil registration data) has shown that many had already started to see a decrease before the pandemic. In the years between 2014 and 2019, life expectancy went down in almost one in five communities for women and one in nine for men.

There are stark geographical differences. Communities with the lowest life expectancy were typically located in urban areas in the North, including Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Blackpool while those with the highest were often based in London and the surrounding home counties. However, even within London and the home counties significant variations can still be seen across small geographical areas.

The comparison between the highest and lowest life

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expectancies is a bleak one. In 2019 there was a 27-year gap in life expectancy for men, with a man in Kensington and Chelsea expected to live until 95, compared to one in Blackpool who would be just 68. The difference for women was almost 20 years, with a woman in Camden having a life expectancy of 95, compared to a community in Leeds where a woman was expected to live until 75.

The biggest decline for women was a loss of three years in an area of Leeds, from 78.7 to 75.6 years, and for men was of 0.4 years in an area of Blackpool, from 68.7 to 68.3 years. There were also significant reversals in life expectancies over this time for women in a number of communities in Yorkshire and The Humber.

Many of the areas with the worst figures were those already experiencing lower life expectancy, together with high levels of poverty and unemployment and lower educational attainment.

They are also, typically, the communities where the pandemic hit hardest, with higher infection and mortality rates, so it is inevitable that life expectancy rates will have deteriorated further. During the

A N N E M I LT O N

first wave, a male living in the most deprived area of England was twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than his equivalent in the least deprived area.

These poor outcomes are similarly highlighted in a recent review

by Professor Sir Michael Marmot which looks at health equality 10 years on from his 2010 ground breaking report, Fair Society Healthy Lives. It found that improvements to life expectancy have stalled, with a growing gap between wealthy and deprived areas. Significantly, more people will be spending more of their lives in poor health, with huge implications not only for their individual wellbeing and prosperity but also for our health and social care system and our economy.

Whilst healthy life years is also an important indicator of health inequality, the differences in life expectancy rates brings inequality into sharp focus. The situation demands immediate action for those living in more deprived areas so that they enjoy the same levels of health and wellbeing as those in more affluent areas. That extends beyond healthcare to those areas which can have a direct impact on health, identified by Marmot as: a good start in life for children; fair employment; a good standard of living; sustainable communities; and the ability for everyone to

have control over their lives. His review calls on government to act on the evidence that exists for what already works well at a regional level, and to collaborate with those regional bodies who are already successfully addressing health inequalities in their area.

The Levelling Up Goals developed by the Purpose Coalition reflect that approach. They provide a framework to close the gaps that currently exist for many people across all stages of their lives which arise as a result of the conditions in which they start their lives, are educated, work and live. The Coalition is already working in partnership with NHS Trusts across the country to share best practice and to identify what more needs to be done to improve equality and opportunity.

The study by Imperial College is the first of its kind to analyse longevity trends in such detail. The alarming picture it presents of a widening gap between wealthy and less privileged communities is a wake-up call which requires a concerted response by national and regional government, with support from local communities, the voluntary sector and business to address the wide-ranging issues of health inequality. This report should shock us all into acting now.

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D R L U K E E VA N S M P

DR LUKE EVANS MP

Gaining momentum on body image 36

D R L U K E E VA N S M P

Upon entering Parliament as a newly elected MP, you are very quickly presented with a whole flurry of conundrums and causes that you are keen to do your best to solve for your constituents.

Amongst all of these things which we do, however, MPs often have their campaigns which they are interested in, having either been affected personally or through family, or having seen the problem first-hand in a previous career.

For me, whilst training as junior doctor, and then in my clinics as a GP, I’d seen a steady, and notable, increase in the number of people suffering from body confidence issues. This could manifest itself in a whole host of ways – people developing an eating disorder like anorexia, a mental health condition like anxiety and depression, or gym-goers feeling the need to bulk up using potentially dangerous steroids, for example.

Having seen the scale of the problem first-hand, and being aware that body image as a health issue had received relatively little attention, I decided it was something I wanted to campaign on.

My hope was to be able to make a difference to the 1.25 million people suffering with an eating disorder in the UK, and the many thousands of people suffering with body confidence issues.

In September 2020, I proposed my Digitally Altered Images Bill in Parliament. If successful, this would require advertisers, broadcasters and publishers to display a disclaimer in cases where an image of a human body or body part has been digitally altered in its proportions for commercial purposes.

This disclaimer would be similar to the ‘P’ symbol for product placement, for example, which you may have noticed on TV. Quite simply, if someone is being paid to post a picture on social media featuring a doctored body, or if advertisers, broadcasters or publishers are making money from a photograph featuring doctored bodies, I believe they should be honest and upfront about having edited it. This would increase openness and transparency amongst advertisers, broadcasters and publishers, and help to foster more honest and realistic representations of the way we look.

My proposed legislation is not, however, about holding individuals to account - so if you want to remove a blemish from your wedding photos, or add a nice filter to your photos, then you would absolutely still be free to do that without adding a disclaimer.

Having received an enormous amount of support, I then launched my #RecogniseBodyImage campaign, which is asking the Government to recognise body image for the first time in UK law. This could be done in two ways – either through supporting my Body Image Bill, or by listing body image as a priority harm

in the Government’s forthcoming Online Safety Bill, which is designed to help keep us all safe online.

Whilst my Body Image Bill ran out of Parliamentary time the first time I introduced it, when I brought it back this January, I was delighted to see that it received coverage right across the world, from Canada, to Germany, to Poland, and there is undoubtedly a real desire to see change in this area.

Israel, France, and, most recently, Norway, have all introduced similar legislation to my Body Image Bill, to protect young and vulnerable people from unrealistic and potentially dangerous depictions of the way we look.

Interestingly, I actually hope I never see my Body Image Bill in action – my hope is that advertisers, broadcasters and publishers simply stop feeling the need to digitally alter body shapes in their adverts, to avoid having to add a disclaimer.

I am delighted that this is rapidly gaining momentum, with David Lloyd Clubs recently announcing a pledge not to digitally alter body proportions in their adverts, and fashion retailer Boohoo also making a similar promise not to doctor their images, which is fantastic to see.

By voluntarily not digitally manipulating their images, brands and organisations have the opportunity to make a real difference to body confidence issues, by not depicting body shapes which, no matter how hard you work, simply cannot be achieved. There is undoubtedly still a significant amount of progress to make, and clearly this is very much a first step, but the momentum body image is gaining is truly encouraging to see.

Dr Luke Evans is the MP for Bosworth. You can follow him on social media @drlukeevans, and you can find out more about his body image work at www.drlukeevans.org.uk

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R T H O N DA M E A N D R E A L E A D S O M M P

Transforming the early years SEEMA KENNEDY OBE SITS DOWN WITH RT HON DAME ANDREA LEADSOM MP TO TALK ABOUT HER W O R K A S C H A I R M A N O F T H E E A R LY Y E A R S H E A LT H Y D E V E L O P M E N T R E V I E W, H O W S H E S E C U R E D £ 5 0 0 M I N T H E S P E N D I N G R E V I E W F R O M C H A N C E L L O R R I S H I S U N A K T O F U N D T H E V I S I O N F O R T H E 10 0 1 C R I T I C A L DAY S , A N D W H Y E M P L OY E R S N E E D T O E M B R AC E F L E X I B L E W O R K A S S TA N DA R D .

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Rt Hon Dame Andrea Leadsom MP: It’s a rather long story! 25 years ago I became involved with a charity called the Oxford Parent-Infant Project because my Mum was a midwife and a trauma counsellor. OxPIP was providing psychotherapeutic support for families who were struggling to form a secure bond with their baby. I helped with fundraising, and before I knew it I was chairing the charity -the rest is history!

You were elected to Parliament in 2010. Can you tell us about your parliamentary early career?

When I came to Parliament I had my ‘3 B’s’ – Babies, Banks and Brussels. My first focus was getting onto the Treasury Select Committee, and looking at what we should do to regulate the banks in light of the financial crisis.

On babies, I set up the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on conception to the age of two, and we heard from some fantastic experts about how the brain develops, what different countries are doing and how parents could receive better information. We know that a baby who is spoken to has a much bigger vocabulary than a baby whose early years are spent in silence, often because parents don’t realise that talking to your baby is an incredible way of stimulating brain development. The APPG culminated in producing the 1001 Critical Days Manifesto that called on the government to provide better support for families, better education, and interventions to reduce circumstances like domestic violence, substance abuse and smoking.

That sounds like a fantastic start to your time in Parliament, but very soon you were in government, weren’t you?

My first job was as City Minister, which is slightly far removed from babies, but very interesting. You have to drop all outside interests when you become a Minister, including APPG work, but one of the things I was able to keep doing was talk to opposition parties. A lot of members of the public say we all must hate each other, but actually I had some really good conversations, with people like Labour’s Dame Tessa Jowell and Lord David Blunkett, Sharon Hodgson MP and former Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson. During her time as Prime Minister, Theresa May invited me to chair an

Inter-Ministerial Group on the early years. It makes a big difference when you are able to command civil service resources, set out a plan and get other Ministers involved.

In Parliament we were also able to introduce baby leave which meant MP’s on maternity or paternity leave were given proxy votes so they could continue to vote on parliamentary business.

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Seema Kennedy OBE: I know the early years are something you’re very passionate about. How did you first become interested?

Can you tell us about the Early Years Healthy Development Review?

It was a specific appointment by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has always been very interested in the early years. The Review is supported by the Department for Health, and sponsoring Ministers in the Department for Education and the Cabinet Office. In phase one, we conducted lots of research, and spoke to parents and carers, academics and professionals across England.

The Best Start for Life: Vision for the 1001 Critical Days was published in March 2021, and its 6 Action Areas were adopted as government policy. In October’s Spending Review, we secured £500 million of funding which is a game changer. This means that local authorities can provide seamless, joined-up support for parents, carers and babies for building parent- infant mental health services, for breastfeeding support work, and providing much better parenting programmes.

What role do you think businesses have as employers to support families?

It is so important. When I was Business Secretary, I was working very hard on the Employment Rights Bill, and it is my view that there should be flexible working as standard.

We introduced shared parental leave, and that’s great, but unfortunately too few Dads are actually taking it. I’d like to see employees put in bids when applying for a job as to the hours they’d like to work – it could be, for example, three days a week, or five mornings a week, and then the employer can weigh them up. We saw during the COVID lockdowns that people can work flexibly. I think this would create greater diversity, and many more women would choose to come back into the workplace. It’s incumbent on businesses to enable flexible working so they can attract and retain the best talent.

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CLAI R E COUTI N HO M P

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CLAI R E COUTI N HO M P

Women in Westminster CL AIRE COUTINHO MP

Who are you?

I’m Claire Coutinho, I’m the MP for East Surrey and I’m the 525th woman to be elected to the House of Commons.

Why did you decide to become an MP? I come from a family of doctors, and I think being an MP is quite like being a GP in that you meet people, you listen to their problems, and you try and solve them as best you can, and that’s what I do and I love doing it.

Why is International Women’s Day important?

International Women’s Day is about celebrating women’s achievements, but also looking at where we can make more progress, because it’s so important that women can access all parts of public life. It’s not about what you look like, it’s about what’s between your ears.

MARCH 8TH MARKS INTERNATIONAL W O M E N ’ S DAY - C E L E B R AT I N G T H E ACHIEVEMENTS OF WOMEN ACROSS THE WORLD. WE SAT DOWN WITH CL AIRE COUTINHO MP TO TALK ABOUT WHY SHE GOT INTO POLITICS, AND HOW ORGANISATIONS C AN SUPPORT MORE WOMEN INTO PUBLIC LIFE.

What have you done to encourage more women to get involved in public life?

Well I’m really passionate about getting women into politics, I work with brilliant organisations like 50:50 Parliament and Women2Win, we try to help women take that first step into public life.

How can businesses support women to get involved in public life?

Getting women into public life is not just a job for the government, it’s also about businesses and employers playing their part as well, it’s about encouraging women but also giving them the flexibility to fully participate in all of these jobs.

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bp

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH

bp’s Kerry Dryburgh

Energising the levelling up agenda: FIT FOR PURPOSE TALKS TO KERRY DRYBURGH, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT FOR PEOPLE & CULTURE AND CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER AT BP AND A LEVELLING UP COMMISSIONER, AS THE GLOBAL ENERGY GIANT UNDERGOES THE BIGGEST T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N I T S 112 - Y E A R H I S T O R Y .

Kerry talks about her leading role as bp looks to reimagine energy and help the world achieve net zero; and how harnessing a just energy transition is a crucial part of delivering for people and levelling up.

In a nutshell, what does your role entail?

I’m responsible for the full employee experience at bp.

That’s everything from recruitment to retirement, as well as the environment in which our people work, including our offices and culture.

I also have responsibility for our health and wellbeing teams, which in recent times have been very high on our agenda – plus the work we’ve been doing around social mobility.

My role covers supporting all of bp’s ~60,000 employees over >60 countries. We have a really exciting few years ahead of us in terms of people as we navigate what capabilities we need for the energy transition, develop our health and wellbeing offer for the future and launch our new leadership capabilities.

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And you’re working at a time of great change at the company.

Yes, we’ve set ourselves a new purpose – to reimagine energy for people and planet. We are transitioning from what we used to call an international oil company to an integrated energy company.

Our ambition is to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero. That means reducing our oil and gas production, growing our low carbon businesses and thinking differently about how we partner with regions, cities and companies and helping them to get to net zero; as well as building other aspects of our business, such as mobility or convenience.

There is a lot of change. From a culture standpoint, we are having to think very differently about our place in the world.

This means we are thinking differently about sustainability, purpose [and] transforming the company. So it’s not just about what we’re doing but the how, and the environment we are creating for our people.

In practice we undertook the biggest transformation of our company structure in our 112-year history over the past two years. We have removed layers and we are becoming much more integrated. Historically we were more of a siloed company that ran businesses that were very focused on their sector.

We’re much more focused on being integrated and we genuinely believe that that is one of our distinct advantages.

We’re growing out our new businesses, in new areas like digital, wind, solar, mobility and power for example. This means we have to work in very different ways. Being an agile company, being faster and more efficient, but not forgetting that we also need to remain safe, is critical. It’s creating some exciting opportunities for our people.

bp

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We are reimagining energy for people and planet.

And in the meantime, you had to deal with the fallout from the pandemic. How was that?

March 2020 was a shock for many companies and caused us to think very differently about how we keep our company running while maintaining safe operations – looking after our people and caring for them.

At the same time, we restructured the business completely. It’s been tough and none of us could have imagined doing all these things at the same time. But I also think that we’ve seen the power of the human spirit in coming together and caring for each other, and the communities in which we operate.

We’re also thinking to the future because the future won’t wait.

Tell us more about your approach to levelling up Social mobility means a huge amount to bp and to the people who work for us. In different ways it’s been the type of agenda we’ve been involved with on a global scale over many years. For me personally it means creating opportunities for everyone to succeed on an equal playing field.

When I reflect on my own background, I took a different path to many, not having gone to university but instead choosing to work. Had people not been willing to support me or provide opportunities I’m not sure I would have been where I am today.

That’s why the work we have been doing at bp is so exciting. As a company we are committed to working in partnership.

What’s happening right now in society, with the planet and our company, I believe is a defining moment in history. The

opportunity to change people’s lives is a really thrilling thing to be a part of. As a company we want to do that in a way that gives everyone a fair chance. As an example of that, last year we refocused the way we talk about diversity and inclusion to include equity. This was a big thing because it signalled a recognition that not everyone starts from the same place. It’s important that we have programmes and offers that support people where they start from. This really spans across the talent lifecycle at bp.

One of our most important offers is our apprenticeship programme where our next generation talent become a critical part of our strategy. This will become even more important as we scale opportunities in low carbon – especially following our successful ScotWind bid and opportunities within our hydrogen and CCUS projects in Teesside.

And is there a recognition that bp can be better by being more diverse?

Absolutely. For many years there has been a strong business case for diverse teams and diverse thinking that creates better solutions and outcomes.

As we think about our new direction and where we’re taking the company, we are evolving into different spaces.

This means we need even more diverse thinking and experiences and people that have come from different places in life. It means we’re also hiring from different places, whether that’s different types of universities, or whether from different types of companies.

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C O M PA S S G R O U P

Levelling Up Award Winner CHLOE JONES APPRENTICESHIP CO-ORDINATOR, COMPASS GROUP UK & IREL AND

Compass is the largest food and support services company in the UK, with over 40,000 employees. It is committed to social mobility and recognises that the hospitality sector is uniquely placed as it can support people with a career, whatever their background or skill set, as you can learn on the job. Not having to join with qualifications, means it’s a barrierless industry, and the business has put in place a number of measures, to help employees with their development, whatever stage in their career they are at.

Chloe is a great example of someone within Compass who is driving forward the social mobility agenda. Chloe joined Compass as an apprentice in 2017, where she successful achieved her level 3 business administration apprenticeship standard which resulted in her being promoted to an apprenticeship co-ordinator. Chloe isn’t one to stop though and is now working towards her HR, Learning and Development, Level 5 Apprenticeship.

Having joined as an apprentice and understanding the benefits it can bring to a career, Chloe is a passionate advocate for skills development and supporting others with their careers. She currently line-manages and mentors three employees, two who have joined the company on the Kickstart programme as well as a Business Administration Apprentice.

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Chloe is responsible for their development and created a structured induction programme, which includes weekly one-to– ones. They all share an office where Chloe overseas their daily work. Part of the overall role has also been contributing to the Compass Kickstart and Apprenticeship programmes.

As part of her own development Chloe has been encouraged to speak up and give her views. This has resulted in Chloe coming up with great ideas around process, how to simplify the stages, help the candidate and identify the right roles for the candidates.

Jonathan Foot, Head of Apprenticeships & Early Careers, Compass Group UK & Ireland, said: “Chloe is such a great asset to our team. I am delighted she has been recognised for a Levelling up Award. She not only supports colleagues through those she manages on a day-to-day basis, but she really does go above and beyond in her role supporting our wider apprenticeship and early careers programmes. Her contribution to our team has helped us to continually review and improve our programme. Chloe is conscious of the importance of proper support when people first join the business. A huge amount

C O M PA S S G R O U P

of our work focuses on mentoring and building employees’ confidence in those early days. Chloe knows how to treat people fairly, has great empathy, while also stretching and challenging them. I have seen a real difference in increased confidence in those she supports.”

Tom Finn, Operation Support Assistant, one of the employees Chloe mentors and line managers, said: “Since I started my new role Chloe has been incredible, she has made me feel as part

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Chloe knows how to treat people fairly, has great empathy, while also stretching and challenging them.

of the team since day one. She has been fully supportive and always there if I need anything extra. She listens to how I like to learn and creates learning plans to suit me. She always makes time for everyone on the team regardless of how busy she is.

She is truly a great leader and manager and is an absolute asset for the team.”

Ned Hollyoak, Apprentice in Level 2 business admin, joined almost two years ago – moved onto a digital marketing course and is now working to a level 3 business admin, said: “Chloe has given me great support. I joined Compass straight from school and had only had casual work before, so didn’t have any experience of working in an office. It can be quite daunting.

Having a mentor like Chloe has been brilliant. She had a lot of patience, which has been great, as sometimes you have to go through things a few times to master them! She also structures the work she gives, so there is time set aside to support with doing elements of the apprenticeship course. She has also provided really helpful input and guidance. I am really keen to continue working through the apprenticeship levels and develop my career. It’s been a huge help to be supported at every step.”

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CO-OP

Spotlight on Steve Murrells from Co-op FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, THE SOCIAL MOBILIT Y AGENDA HAS BEEN ABOUT GETTING YOUNG PEOPLE FROM UNDER-PRIVILEGED BACKGROUNDS INTO L AW OR FINANCE BY SUPPORTING THEM THROUGH EDUC ATION AND PROFESSIONAL QUALIFIC ATION. IF YOU LOOK AT THIS YEAR’S SOCIAL MOBILIT Y EMPLOYER INDEX, PUBLISHED EVERY YEAR BY THE SOCIAL MOBILIT Y FOUNDATION, YOU’LL SEE 95% OF THE BUSINESSES ARE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCIES AND GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT S. This is a good thing. We are immeasurably better as a society for increasing the proportion of people from different background in those professions. However, this can only ever help a small number of individuals because there is only so much room at the top. Perhaps even more importantly, it doesn’t help communities because pursuing these careers usually means leaving the community that raised them to go to different cities – it invariably hollows out communities rather than enriching them.

So while I celebrate young people who do well in their A-levels and GCSEs and go on to the next phase of their academic journey, I am more focused on those who, because of their circumstances, have not thrived. One in five GCSE pupils in England did not achieve grade 4 either English or Maths so are locked out of many career pathways before their adult life starts.

For me in an age of levelling up, social mobility must be about individuals and communities prospering together. We need it to impact not hundreds of people, but tens of thousands of people and their communities. We need not one young kid from a challenging estate to become a QC – although that should be celebrated – but dozens of kids from that estate getting the skills to be successful in a range of jobs.

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I really worry when I see the falling numbers of those starting level 2 apprenticeships – that is the GCSE equivalent – and it has dropped every year since 2014/2015. It is these ‘first step on the ladder’ jobs that help to create a better future for a broader range of people, allowing them to capitalise on their talents.

Businesses like the Co-op can provide a pathway for individuals from every community. At any one time, we have 1,000 apprentices in our stores, logistics teams and funeralcare homes and almost half are level 2 starts. We know that the thousands of apprentices we have had in our Co-op over the years have been not only fantastic for our business but also for the communities that raised them because they have tended to stay there and enrich them.

Our vision at the Co-op is Co-operating for a Fairer World and we

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Businesses like the Co-op can provide a pathway for individuals from every community.

CO-OP

know that when businesses come together we can help support communities to prosper and we have achieved that through apprenticeships. Earlier this year we created a scheme which has seen 28 businesses pledge more than £7m of unspent levy funds to create apprenticeships in SMEs across the UK… it’s already created 350 new apprenticeships giving those people the chance to get on and realise their potential.

I believe that sectors like retail and businesses like the Co-op can be engines of social mobility on a scale we have never seen before and in way that will enrich communities not hollow them out. Certainly, the data suggests that we are much more diverse socio-economically than many employers. We’ve surveyed our top 150 leaders and 31% of us are from lower socio-economic backgrounds which is significantly more diverse

than equivalent cadre in other sectors like the Government and professional services. Retail, and sectors like it, are often a more accessible vehicle for people to get on through while staying in their communities and we should celebrate that as much as we celebrate the child who gets on through the law, finance or the civil service.

We expect the Levelling-Up White Paper to be published imminently and I hope we see in it a plan about making sure that opportunities are there for everyone to be as good as their talent allows. A plan where individuals can flourish AND which helps communities prosper together so no one gets left behind.

For that we will need co-operation between government, businesses and communities.

I am up for that.

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TA R M A C

Levelling up in construction THE PUBLIC ATION OF THE GOVERNMENTS’ L E V E L L I N G U P W H I T E PA P E R H A S B E E N D E L AY E D UNTIL L ATER IN 2022, ALTHOUGH MUCH DETAIL IS YET TO BE CONFIRMED, THERE ARE THREE KEY AREAS ON THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA WHERE TARMAC IS MAKING A SIGNIFIC ANT CONTRIBUTION, INCL UDING SKILL S AND EMPLOYMENT, HEALTH AND WELLBEING, AND ECONOMIC GROW TH.

Skills and employment Tarmac offers a wide range of professional development and training initiatives aimed at creating a highly skilled workforce to support the delivery of the UK’s infrastructure ambitions and net-zero strategy to build back greener.

The Professional Operator Development Programme (PODP) is designed around the mineral processing mobile and static

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plant operator apprenticeship qualification and supports those in their first industry roles, to reskill people joining the industry for the first time, as well as colleagues keen to develop new skills to progress in their careers.

The programme covers topics designed to enhance professional understanding of the industry, equipment, and safety, such as risk assessments, and the proper maintenance of plant and equipment. It’s delivered through a series of workshops, e-learning modules, and practical on-the-job training.

Tarmac also supports people to gain their math and English GCSEs, not achieved at school.

Since launching the PODP in 2018, over 150 apprentices have enrolled on the programme. So far, 70 of those enrolled have completed the programme, with around 40 of them gaining distinctions.

Early careers recruitment In December 2021, Tarmac launched its biggest ever earlycareers recruitment campaign, with a range of apprenticeships and graduate roles across mainland UK.

TA R M A C

Young people, from diverse backgrounds, are encouraged to apply and will received the support they need to develop the skills and experience required to progress in their careers.

Early engagement with schools and colleges to promote careers in STEM. Tarmac offers a range of opportunities to engage with children and young adults. In October 2021, almost 80, year-eight students from Bellingham Middle School and Dr. Thomlinson Middle School attended a STEM event at Tarmac’s Barrasford Quarry.

Tarmac is also a long-standing, national partner of Solutions for the Planet’s Big Ideas Programme – a social enterprise working nationally to build partnerships between businesses and schools to promote sustainability and science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM event) careers, as well as develop employability skills. Also, it’s employee volunteers to mentor young people through the annual competition process that supports school students, from across the UK, to generate ideas designed to improve society, economy, and the environment.

Health and wellbeing The health and wellbeing of its employees, contractor, suppliers, and communities, is central to the future business success of Tarmac and forms part of the ‘people’ pillar in the sustainability strategy 2030.

Recently, Tarmac won a raft of awards and commendations at the Mineral Products Association (MPA), and British Precast Health and Safety Awards, for its outstanding achievements in building safe working environments, for its employees, customers, and the communities which it serves.

The company won the Safer Through Improvements in Health and Wellbeing award for creating an occupational health and wellbeing learning centre, at the company’s National Skills and Safety Park in Nottinghamshire.

This was followed by winning the Safer Together award, for its Professional Operator Development Programme (PODP), and a further commendation for a Vehicle and Pedestrian Management Project (VPMP) at its Newark Building Products plant.

Economic growth In October 2021, Tarmac set out how it would build on its longterm sustainability strategy with its 2030 goals.

Aligned to Tarmac’s commercial strategy and corporate purpose, the sustainability strategy focuses on three key themes that are central to business operations and customers: people, planet and solutions.

Against each of these themes, Tarmac has identified key priority areas of focus and set ambitious commitments, alongside specific goals, and detailed performance targets.

Tarmac’s commitments include: • To develop a zero-harm culture that enables positive mental, social, and financial wellbeing.

• To continue to build an inclusive and diverse workforce and upskill employees to provide more opportunities and meet future business needs.

• To be net-zero before 2050 and cut CO2 by 45% per tonne of product by 2030 (against a 1990 baseline).

• To manage climate risks and opportunities across all Tarmac sites and use land assets to deploy nature-based solutions to reduce CO2 and achieve biodiversity net gain.

• To use over 70 million tonnes of waste from other industries, as alternative fuels, in its processes and products.

• To ensure 100% of procured goods and services are responsibly sourced.

Tarmac’s Guide to Sustainable Road Building The launch of the guide, late last year, is rooted in the principles and targets set out in Tarmac’s 2030 sustainability strategy. It sets out Tarmac’s sustainable approaches to road development and highways maintenance, and offers a range of innovative materials, and paving solutions, to improve sustainability and reduce carbon emissions and wider environmental impact.

Products listed in the guide are readily available and have been designed to help customers, and suppliers, meet their climate change goals.

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LIVER POOL JOH N MOOR ES UN IVERSITY

Justine visits LJMU JUSTINE GREENING, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUC ATION VISITED MARK POWER, VICE CHANCELLOR, TO DISCUSS LJMU’S SUCCESSFUL TRACK RECORD PRIORITISING SOCIAL MOBILIT Y AND INCLUSION.

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LIVER POOL JOH N MOOR ES UN IVERSITY

Justine, after leaving Government in 2018, founded The Purpose Coalition to focus business leaders and government on issues around social mobility, climate change and the Levelling Up agenda. This includes the crucial role universities like LJMU will play in developing and implementing policy for the country’s economic development.

Following a discussion about LJMU’s role in providing opportunities for students from the Liverpool City Region and the wider area, Mark led a tour of the new campus buildings, which are integral to the University’s future plans.

“It was great to be at Liverpool John Moores University earlier in the week and see the amazing new Student Life Building and Sports Centre. These state-of-the-art facilities will help with the university’s work to drive social mobility and level up communities,” Justine said.

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H U M B E R , C O A S T A N D VA L E H E A L T H

PARTNERSHIP POWER:

How fresh collaboration is challenging deep-rooted inequalities in 1,500 square miles of eastern England INTEGRATED C ARE SYSTEMS (ICS) BRING TOGETHER THE FORCES WORKING TO MEET HEALTH AND C ARE NEEDS OF A REGION. BY PL ANNING AND DELIVERING AS ONE, THEIR AIM IS TO IMPROVE POPUL ATION HEALTH AND REDUCE INEQUALITIES BET WEEN DIFFERENT GROUPS. FOR THE HUMBER, COAST AND VALE ICS, THIS MEANS ENABLING THE PEOPLE IT SERVES TO START WELL, LIVE WELL AND AGE WELL. PROFESSOR STEPHEN EAMES, C H I E F E X E C U T I V E , S P O K E T O F I T F O R P U R P O S E R E C E N T L Y T O T E L L U S M O R E A B O U T I T S R O L E I N L E V E L L I N G U P.

Fit for Purpose: The ICS brings together six local councils, six CCGs, seven NHS trusts, several community services and ambulance trusts; plus NHS England, NHS improvement and the wider network of health and care providers. How do you achieve a coherent and consistent approach to the levelling up challenge with so many parties involved?

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SE: As a partnership, some of the principles are about mutuality,

we’re talking about the NHS or local government, we do already work to a consistent level of standards, whether that be people or clinical standards. That’s de rigueur, everybody has to do that, it doesn’t matter what part of the system they’re in. There obviously are lots of inconsistencies in the way that we might do things. For example, should we have one way for driving improvements in services that is the ICS way or not?

recognising difference and diversity and making the best of all of that. The way we are organised is essentially focusing on place and all the action comes from that. In terms of consistency, our approach is that we should only do things at the ICS level that can’t be done in place-based or collaborative settings. You might argue that making the case for large amounts of inward investment can’t really be done by a single place, it needs to be done by the ICS as a collective, for example. Of course, whether

There is also the campaigning arm of an ICS. We want consistency of investment, approach and practice to address challenges within the system. We absolutely want a consistent approach to climate change and big preventative health activities, such as stopping smoking. The biggest killer in Humber, Coast and Vale, for example, is smoking and smokingrelated diseases.

How does the necessity for levelling up shape this collective financial push?

Levelling up allows us to utilise the money where we need to spend it most. Hull is virtually top of the league in terms of the most deprived communities in England. Given the financial muscle of the ICS, are we really spending all our money in the right place?

I think the answer right now is ‘no’ - when we do get allocations, we need to lever them towards those that need it most.

Can you explain the thinking behind your ‘start well, live well, age well’ mission?

It’s what’s known as a ‘life course’ or holistic approach. The absolute shift that this ambition is behind, is about focusing on populations and the associated inequalities. Within the span of the ICS, you have the housing and the homelessness challenges, which are equally as important as the health inequality challenges that we have. That is why we have framed things in this way. It really focuses the emphasis of our ambitions away from where traditionally the NHS has been. This is even more important as we come out of COVID. Sadly, it’s worse now in Hull than it was before we started, and you can see that differentially in all the other areas we serve.

Our overall ambition is to become a population health system.

Everything we do is driven by well informed, up-to-date data about the various populations we serve. We can then start to meld our services in an integrated way around those needs.

Our mission also captures the holistic approach to how you care and support patients. One of the big thrusts of the long-term plan of the NHS and the strategies behind integrated care systems, is about bringing services together, breaking down organisational boundaries and using resources in a very integrated way to make them easier to access. That may be through virtual mechanisms or physical hubs where you bring together a whole range of services.

What are the biggest barriers as you move towards this population health system model – and what part might technology play in addressing them?

I’d like to be able to say, ‘in Hull these are the population health challenges and this is what we’re doing about it’. I’d also like to be able to say that across the whole Humber, Coast and Vale patch. Everything is entirely dependent on accurate, wellinformed data. You can’t really get to that vision of what you want to express, and therefore address, without it.

In terms of levelling up, without that data and vision, you might not be focusing on the right area. That’s a real challenge and we’ll have to invest quite a lot in that. The second challenge is about investment itself. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that we probably need to invest more than we are doing to make a difference. The third challenge is cultural.

If we were talking about this to a bunch of public health professionals, we’d all be on the same page but a lot of people understandably don’t know what population health is. I think we have a big agenda with our people in developing that philosophy and focus.

H U M B E R , C O A S T A N D VA L E H E A L T H

Will the ICS play a big role in attracting the inward investment that can drive social mobility?

We are looking for around £600m of capital to completely redevelop the NHS across that part of the ICS. We’ve linked that to inward investment in initiatives like freeports and we’re working across the divide of health, care and local government. We’re looking at it from an anchor institution mentality, while working as a collective community to design, develop and implement what we want to put in place.

We know unemployment was exacerbated by the pandemic, with Hull particularly affected. What is the ICS doing to open up access to employment and career progression?

There are something like 340 career paths in the NHS alone.

We are in a different position from our local government colleagues because we’ve had a lot more investment and actually our issue is about recruiting and retaining people.

There is a massive opportunity to really turn the engine on and drive it hard in response to these socioeconomic challenges. Our collective muscle is a very powerful thing.

We’ve got a big programme, in which we’re aiming to get 1,000 young people into apprenticeships, and we’re looking to build on that.

In addition, there’s been a massive interest in people coming into the NHS, as a result of COVID. We’re therefore expanding and developing our training programmes. That’s one of our biggest projects at the moment, cutting across all our partners.

Another important factor is the voluntary sector. There are at least 5,000 voluntary and associated organisations here. They are the organisations that can get where we can’t reach, so it is crucial that we build on that workforce.

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BA R T S H E A LT H

How capital asset is changing lives across London HAVING RECOGNISED THE POSITIVE INFLUENCE IT C AN HAVE ON THE 2.5 MILLION PEOPLE IT SERVES, BARTS HEALTH NHS TRUST IS WORKING HARD TO INCREASE SOCIAL MOBILIT Y IN LONDON. HERE FIT FOR PURPOSE REPORTS ON ITS A P P R O A C H T O L E V E L L I N G U P.

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Barts Health NHS Trust serves some of the most diverse communities in the country with a catchment area of around 2.5 million people.

It operates from four major hospital sites – the Royal London, St Bartholomew’s, Whipps Cross and Newham; as well as community locations, including Mile End hospital.

Its influence extends far beyond the network of health services it provides, however. The trust plays an important role in the wider levelling up agenda in London, with an approach shaped by the diverse communities it delivers services to.

Six in 10 people living within its core catchment population identify as black and minority ethic (BAME). And this is reflected in the trust’s diverse team.

More than half (54 per cent) of its 24,000-strong team are from a BAME background – three times the national average and representing the largest BAME workforce in the NHS. Furthermore, 62 ethnicities are represented within the team overall.

Diversity and inclusion underpin the organisation’s levelling up approach. Its current annual plan, for example, sets out headline goals; to create a culturally intelligent leadership community, to deliver a fair and just culture and to work in community partnership to promote equity.

The trust is currently working towards increasing the proportion of its ethnic minority staff in higher pay bands (8a and above) by three per cent a year. Data since 2020 shows an improvement in this area, although there is a recognition that there is a lot more to do.

BA R T S H E A LT H

It offers career advice and talent management to anyone in a senior leadership group that is under-represented; in addition to “wellbeing appraisals” with staff at all levels of the organisation.

The trust is aspiring to create a “just culture”, where staff are able to analyse when things go wrong without fear of retribution, enabling everyone to learn from mistakes and provide a better service for patients.

To support this, the trust is ensuring that all disciplinary cases adopt a “pause and reflect” period and seek an informal mutually agreed resolution.

Meanwhile, the trust has set a target of 95 per cent of patients having their ethnicity coded by March 2022.

To ensure no-one is disadvantaged in accessing services, Barts is reviewing waiting lists by ethnicity and deprivation. It also plans to increase accessibility to remote consultations for patients who do not speak English, by using more advocates in virtual appointments. The trust recently agreed a policy to prioritise patients with learning disabilities on its waiting lists.

The trust aims to be an anchor institution for East London, with a mission to advance the welfare of the populations it serves, leveraging its role as a steward of public resources.

By working together with East London partners across the NHS and local authorities, it strives to maximise socio-economic impact by creating employment opportunities for local people. As a result of its ‘Community Works for Health’ scheme, over 1,500 East Enders have found work in the trust since it was formed in 2012. The work is done in partnership with local authorities, housing associations and the community sector. Through these partnerships, Barts creates well-paid and sustainable employment and training opportunities. As well as this there are volunteering positions, where volunteers and local people coming through preemployment training and work placements are treated as internal staff for appropriate vacancies within the trust.

The trust’s commitment to reducing health and social inequalities involves connecting with local communities to tackle core impact areas such as improving air quality and promoting environmental sustainability through reducing waste, energy and water.

Over the last three years Barts has implemented a major scheme to collaborate with 37 local schools to support entry into healthrelated degrees and apprenticeships.

Its Healthcare Horizons programme, for example, supports 1,000 students a year, spanning over 20 schools, in encouraging them to build careers in the NHS. Each year 200 work experience

opportunities and 50 apprenticeships are created.

The programme was developed to help improve recruitment and retention of staff, working with schools and colleges across four London boroughs; Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest.

Young people who are not well connected or aware of healthcare careers are encouraged to make the first step on the career ladder – via increased awareness of NHS careers and pathways. A virtual work experience platform has been developed to supplement work experience which has greatly extended the reach of widening participation work.

The programme promotes less well-known careers, especially hard-to-recruit professions. Other key factors of the initiative include activities which raise career aspirations and promote the NHS as a local employer.

It also supports recruitment to higher education, apprenticeships and entry level jobs; and seeks to improve careers advice and guidance provided to young people.

Barts Health NHS Trust states its overall vision as being a “high-performing group of NHS hospitals, renowned for excellence and innovation, and providing equitable, safe and compassionate care to our patients in east London and beyond”.

Social mobility and the wider levelling up agenda are integral to this vision. Diverse decision-making, experiences and backgrounds combine to enable continual improvement and a hugely positive impact on surrounding communities.

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S O D E XO

Purposeful action on the frontline DESPITE HAVING A PRESENCE IN OVER 80 COUNTRIES, SODEXO HAS NOT LOST SIGHT OF ITS RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE THOUSANDS OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES IT S E R V E S A N D I M PAC T S U P O N . A N D , T H E G L O B A L PA N D E M I C H A S O N LY R E A F F I R M E D THIS. FIT FOR PURPOSE TALKS TO GREG AUSTIN FROM SODEXO HEALTHC ARE UK&I.

Sodexo is committed to making a positive impact on the communities within which it operates; as well as wider society and the planet. In 2021, it publicly set out key priorities across four impact areas – people, places, planet and partners – in a Social Impact Pledge.

This ethical manifesto has was never more relevant as the world reacted to the challenges of COVID-19.

As a Purpose Coalition member, it has aligned its commitments with the Levelling Up Goals in the wake of the pandemic.

Since the early stages of the outbreak, Sodexo’s social value agenda drove the way it supports its people, and has been the backdrop to the day-to-day work of its 6,000-strong team working in its healthcare division UK and Ireland.

These employees were on the frontline throughout, working in partnership with the wider industry and sharing their expertise to help the NHS fight the threat posed by COVID-19.

Sodexo’s team mobilised to provide bespoke catering, concierge (Circles by Sodexo) and security services for the first British coronavirus evacuees returning from Wuhan, China within 48 hours.

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S O D E XO

Staff also worked tirelessly at hospitals and COVID-19 testing centres across the UK to deliver essential services and to keep patients, residents, clients and colleagues safe.

In April 2020, Sodexo’s network of HR business partners, learning and development (L&D) managers and health and safety executive (HSE) managers in the healthcare business, identified an increase in the number of issues being raised by onsite teams.

This network is embedded in large and medium size contracts and so provided first-hand insight into the extraordinary personal and professional challenges staff were facing in managing and operating within a pandemic.

Key indicators that showed the pandemic was having an impact included an increase in sickness absence relating to self-isolation, the number of people shielding, increase in resignations, reluctance to return to work after self-isolation and reluctance from other segments to be redeployed to healthcare contracts.

Managers of these sites were also seeking additional assurance, advice and guidance on a daily basis as to how to respond and provide leadership during this unique time. Considering the scale of the situation, referring managers or individuals to online resources to answer questions was not deemed to be sufficient.

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Sodexo’s hospital teams were under intense pressure and dealing with a range of issues that affected both their professional and personal lives.

Sodexo’s hospital teams were under intense pressure and dealing with a range of issues that affected both their professional and personal lives. Coping with increased numbers of bodies that needed to be moved to the morgue, being exposed to death when it was not normally part of their daily routine, stress and anxiety all put extra demands on the working day.

At home, financial and family concerns were common – over their own health, the risk of infecting loved ones, support for them as key workers, homelessness, isolation, domestic violence and self-harm.

Sodexo’s Social Impact Pledge ‘Our People’ pathway touches many aspects of its employees’ lives and one crucial strand is to support wellbeing. In light of the increased pressures Sodexo Healthcare’s HR, L&D and HSE teams identified the need to provide emotional and psychological support to all onsite employees through proactive presence, engagement, education and support.

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S O D E XO

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The benefit and impact has the potential to be life-changing for individuals and their families

With the existing employee assistance service unable to flex to provide on-site face-to-face support, and with no alternatives identified, it was agreed a bespoke service would be developed The counselling service took learnings from its global healthcare business and was specifically designed to respond to the needs of Sodexo’s frontline, supervisory and management colleagues. It is based on four pillars: • Presence: Provide proactive, visible and in-person support options for frontline team members to deliver and demonstrate Sodexo’s ongoing commitment to improving the wellbeing and quality of life of its people at such a challenging time.

• Engagement: Ongoing analysis of anonymised counselling session output to help the team identify key themes affecting employees’ mental health and wellbeing. This insight equips individual sites with information to develop on-site initiatives that target specific issues, such as dealing with COVID-19 grief, that are emerging as a result of the pandemic.

This helps to identify further ways to help the team to cope and build their resilience.

• Education: Help team leaders and managers to spot the signs of problems, as well as improve their ability to tackle issues among colleagues, clients and patients. Regular bitesize virtual training sessions called ‘Tool-box talks’ cover a range of topics such as ‘Listening’, ‘Questions’, ‘Signposting’ and ‘Recognising Signs’ to better equip them to have supportive, understanding conversations.

• A variety of support options: Recognise and respond to the different needs of individuals and teams by offering a range of solutions including one-to-one and group counselling services, both pre-bookable and drop-in clinics for anyone experiencing emotional and psychological distress.

The programme provides support for existing mental health conditions, but also helps to pick up on early signs to help prevent

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mental health problems from occurring. The benefit and impact of this has the potential to be life-changing for individuals and their families, but can also help to reduce pressure on increasingly indemand and stretched health and social care services.

The counselling service is part of a package of mental health and wellbeing tools available, including Talk, Sodexo’s employee assistance programme, which offers benefits such as a professional, independent telephone line and an online wellbeing media zone.

S O D E XO

The variety of tools available to Sodexo employees aims to provide an all-round employee wellbeing solution which recognises that individuals, and their differing circumstances, may require different levels of support.

The bespoke counselling service was launched in June 2020 at the company’s Central Manchester contract by an experienced counsellor and psychotherapist who now leads a team of 11 dedicated counsellors, all of whom are available for face-to-face sessions at 10 Healthcare sites.

Initially launched on a three-month trial, due to its success, the service was extended, with a view to offering it to other high-pressure sites/contracts.

The service has also been extended to teams working at 31 Nuffield Health locations. Some 8,000+ testing centre staff are now benefitting from Mental Health awareness team sessions, which are facilitated remotely by its dedicated team of counsellors.

Since its launch: • 323 individuals have attended one or more counselling session • 1,603 counselling sessions have been delivered • 893 toolbox talks with managers have been delivered • 155 group counselling sessions have been held.

Clients value this investment too. Tracy Bullock, chief executive, University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust says: “What greater thing can we do for the wellbeing of staff? I am wholly supportive of the service. For staff on the frontline to be able to speak to someone who is trained who can listen to them and support them is a phenomenal success.”

Sodexo’s HR and L&D teams regularly review how the service is delivered and will continue to tailor it to ensure it best suits people’s needs.

One early innovation to the counselling service was delivered when those staff who were initially shielding through illness or disability received a letter from the NHS in July advising them that they could go back to work.

As a more vulnerable group, they had concerns about returning to work with COVID-19 still present. As a result, members of this group were given the opportunity to use the onsite counselling service to support their transition and discuss their anxieties.

This initiative supports Sodexo’s people and ensures it continues to be by the side of its clients, day in day out, to support health and care outcomes.

By partnering with experienced counsellors and psychotherapists to deliver training in addition to the core counselling service, the company is equipping its team with valuable knowledge that can benefit them in their careers and their personal lives and helping to creating positive social impact and healthier, more resilient community.

In applying the National TOMs framework methodology, it was calculated that the social return investment for the local communities equates to £994,400 in social return in investment by virtue of the wider improved wellbeing and engagement of each individual.

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U K P O W E R N E T WO R K S

Leading the charge UK POWER NET WORKS’ INFLUENCE PUTS IT AT T H E C E N T R E O F DAY- T O - DAY L I F E I N B R I TA I N – AND ON THE FRONTLINE OF THE LEVELLING UP BATTLE. CEO BASIL SC ARSELL A SPOKE TO RT H O N J U S T I N E G R E E N I N G R E C E N T LY T O S H A R E H I S INSIGHTS ON THE FIRM’S WORK IN OPENING UP

Fit for Purpose:

What does UK Power Networks do in a nutshell?

We deliver electricity to 8.2 million households and businesses in London, the East of England and the South East of England.

The focus for us is to provide great customer service, but we also make sure the 6000 employees are well looked after and their safety is paramount. Of course, my job as CEO is to also provide the direction for the company and a reasonable return to the shareholders.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL. Because of the nature of what you do, you have to plan for the long term. Does that help your approach to being a purposeful organisation?

In terms of purpose, we focus on making sure our employees are well looked after. We are a respected and, importantly, a trusted corporate citizen; and we are sustainably cost efficient. As an employer of choice, we spend a lot of time with our employees because we regard them as our biggest and most important asset.

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Were there any positive approaches that came out of the pandemic that will remain?

When the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown, there was fear in the community. None of us knew how serious the virus was going to be. All 6000 of us went home. The first thing we did was to provide the technology to the people that we believed could work from home. We delivered screens, iPads, laptops and so on so they could work from home. Then we had the 4000 employees that were required to come in every day. The important focus there was the safety of our employees. We managed to get PPE very quickly and we provided each employee with their own vehicle - generally they share a company vehicle with other employees. The whole rearranging of the workforce and changing the work methods to make sure the safety of our employees was paramount, was done within four or five days. Again, this supported my view that in an emergency, if you’ve

got the goodwill from your employees, you can tap into it, and the employees responded magnificently.

U K P O W E R N E T WO R K S

We focus on engagement with the organisation making sure that they understand the direction of the company. We measure their commitment and engagement with the organisation on a yearly basis so that we’re accountable. We just don’t talk about doing the right thing by the employees, we actually get measured. On 23rd of March 2020, the Prime Minister wrote to all of us correctly saying ‘please stay home’. Three days later, I had to write to 4000 of our employees to say, ‘please, please come to work’ because they were operational employees. Keeping the lights on, as you could imagine, was paramount during that period.

Every employee turned up, notwithstanding the fact that the rest of the community were at home. That supported our view that if you treat employees well, they will treat our customers well.

We talk about being a respected and trusted corporate citizen.

We measure the level of customer service we provide. We focus on the reliability of the electricity network and, importantly, we are central in enabling the transition to net zero. In order to achieve net zero by 2050, the country and certainly our part of the world, in London in the South East, must decarbonise electricity, transport, and heat. What needs to happen is to take carbon out of electricity, and put electricity into everything else.

So, therefore, we need to make sure that our network is fit for purpose when electric vehicles and eventually heat pumps come on stream. Finally, we also aim to be sustainably cost efficient, providing the lowest cost, while at the same time great service, to our customers. So that’s our vision, but we measure it and, and communicate it, to the employees pretty much every day.

What does levelling up mean to your business?

There is a lot of change in our industry. The focus is achieving net zero by 2050. It started arguably 10 years ago or earlier, but it’s picking up the pace now in terms of electric vehicles, decarbonisation of heat and so on. It’s all becoming very digital.

The way the electricity industry is changing, if you haven’t got the technical skills or the resources to buy the technology, you could be left seriously behind. Therefore, we have what we call the service priority register where we identify, for example, vulnerable customers. Vulnerable customers have a very wide definition. It’s not just lack of financial resources. For example, a young mother that goes home from hospital with a baby suddenly becomes a vulnerable customer for us because, if the power is off, the consequences are serious. So, we identify those customers and provide personal service. Vulnerable customers can ring a named employee at any hour. As we transition to electric vehicles, what do you need at your house to be able to charge your vehicle?

We work with local authorities to make sure that no one is left behind. We also encourage our employees to work with their local communities and we provide them with days off from work so that they can do charity work.

Levelling up is something that should happen in every town, every village and every suburb. Take any village in the UK and there will be individuals that need help to reach some sort of equality with the rest of the community. We tend to select employees locally because we provide a local service and the individual can provide a vital service, keeping the lights on. And if they’re local, they feel a responsibility and are more committed – and they get to know the local community, which helps to provide the service we deliver.

How are you attracting the talent into the business that you need for the future?

Firstly, we make sure that we are a good place to work. We are number six among the best large companies to work for. We make sure that staff get proper training. We make sure that we rank in the top 10 in terms of equality, diversity and inclusiveness so that we have the ability to choose our employees from the biggest possible pool of resources. We aim to have our employees represent the communities that we serve; and we want them to be proud of where they work.

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MAKE HAPPEN

U Can UCAS! LIKE OTHER PARTNERSHIPS, MAKE HAPPEN N E E D E D T O A DA P T T O N E W WAY S O F W O R K I N G A S A R E S U LT O F T H E PA N D E M I C A N D M O V E AWAY FROM AN INSTITUTION-LED APPROACH. IT SET UP EIGHT WORKING GROUPS, EACH TASKED WITH CREATING EVENTS AND RESOURCES TO TARGET A SPECIFIC COHORT OF STUDENTS OR A KEY TOPIC AREA. THE GROUPS SET UP TO COVER THE UC AS PROCESS WENT ON TO CREATE AND DELIVER THE ‘U CAN UCAS!’ PROGRAMME IN AUTUMN 2020.

The Challenge Make Happen recognised that the disruption to learning caused by the pandemic meant that post-16 students wouldn’t receive the same support to guide them through the university application process and could be put off applying. As the UCAS process follows a set timeline of dates, it needed to act quickly to reach students and to deliver the support virtually.

Approach It created the ‘U Can UCAS!’ programme, a small-scale fiveweek programme run in November 2020 which aimed to offer personalised support to a cohort of post-16 students with their UCAS applications. Students were required to complete an application to join the programme, including a reason as to why they would be a good candidate to ensure buy-in from them to commit to the entire programme. Eight students were accepted from four different sixth forms or colleges.

The programme was delivered over Zoom with Make Happen staff, Causeway Education and student ambassadors in hour-long evening sessions which covered the following topics: • Navigating UCAS and searching for courses • The art of crafting a personal statement- workshop delivered by Causeway Education.

• How to find bursaries and scholarships • Discuss University Life with our University Ambassadors

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Results Students completed a survey at the beginning and end of the programme to allow Make Happen to evidence some really positive evaluation data. Of the students completing both evaluations, all of them strongly agreed that they now understood the UCAS process and that their knowledge of all aspects of higher education had increased. This was a fantastic achievement and aligned with the aims of the programme. The data also showed a strong correlation between their increased knowledge of university types and financial support with their intention to apply to Higher Education. There were substantial increases in student knowledge around three key areas of HE – the different types of university, financial support and the different opportunities available in higher education. Students also commented that they found the sessions on personal statements and student finance the most useful.

All of the students completing the evaluation agreed that the programme was helpful, they would recommend it to a friend and they learnt something new. This was further reflected in additional comments made by students: “Every lesson taught me something new. I never originally wanted to go to uni until 2 weeks before these sessions, so this allowed me to gain the knowledge that people who had wanted to go to uni already had for a long time.”

The small-scale and sustained nature of the programme meant that Make Happen’s collaborative outreach officers could develop relationships with the students and offer bespoke support.

Students received personalised follow-up emails after every session offering feedback and further support. Each weekly session was based on the discussions that had taken place in the sessions which included rearranging the personal statement session so that it took place before internal school deadlines.

The strong relationships built with students meant that a couple felt able to contact them for further support even after the programme had ended.

What’s next?

The programme demonstrated the value of building relationships with students over a sustained period and the impact intensive programmes can have, regardless of the fact that it was delivered virtually and out of school hours. Make Happen hopes to run it again in the summer term, targeting students who missed the main UCAS deadline for this year or who want to apply for early entry courses in the next academic year.

MAKE HAPPEN

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N E T WO R K R A I L

World Homeless Day 64

N E T WO R K R A I L

T O M A R K W O R L D H O M E L E S S DAY L A S T O C T O B E R , N E T W O R K R A I L S I G N E D T H E RO U G H SLEEPING ON RAIL CHAR TER ALONGSIDE THE SECRETARY OF S TATE F OR TRANSPOR T, RT HON GRANT SHAPPS, AND BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE, SETTING OUT A PAN-INDUSTRY SAFEGUARDING APPROACH TO HELP PROVIDE A ROUTE OUT OF HOMELESSNESS FOR EVERY RO U G H S L E E P E R O N B R I TA I N ’ S R A I LWAY S .

At the same time, Network Rail launched pilot outreach services at Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street stations with their Routes out of Homelessness charity partner, Shelter.

Each team consists of a Stakeholder Manager, two Engagement Workers, and a Training and Volunteering Co-Ordinator who supports Peer Mentors volunteering their time, some of whom have lived experience of homelessness. The outreach teams support people at the stations who may be rough sleeping – either by meeting them when walking around the stations or through referrals made by station staff and colleagues from Northern Rail and British Transport Police. In Birmingham, some people approach the Shelter-staffed help kiosk on the concourse to seek support themselves.

When people in possible need are identified, Shelter offers direct tailored help to find accommodation and with processes needed to establish a more settled life, such as obtaining personal identification, registering with a doctor, and accessing mental health support.

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Many of those helped have been living on the streets for some time.

So far, 168 people who were sleeping rough in or around the two stations have been helped. Crucially, 65 people are now in temporary accommodation, and a further ten have gained permanent accommodation. In addition, 83 people have been able to access assistance for addiction or mental health treatment and one person has been offered part-time employment with Shelter.

Many of those helped have been living on the streets for some time, so the intervention by colleagues marks the first step in securing life-changing support.

One of the people supported was Jack* who was referred by Network Rail colleagues in December. He’d lost his tenancy after being furloughed at the start of the pandemic and had been sleeping rough for nine months.

Shelter worked with its partners to find Jack somewhere to stay longer term and he’s now settled in temporary accommodation.

Jack said: “I had no idea what my rights or options were, but Network Rail and Shelter have been amazing in helping me get to this turning point in my life. Without this I would still be on the streets, and because of their help I’m now back at work again.

For the first time in months I feel safe and positive about my future.”

In addition, the training given to station colleagues has given them confidence in how to sensitively approach people sleeping rough. This includes learning about the complex and traumatising factors which can lead to someone losing their home.

The pilot project is helping people sleeping rough, and rail staff are contributing to addressing homelessness in the cities of Manchester and Birmingham. As pandemic restrictions ease and passenger numbers increase, this work will continue to have a positive impact on everyone’s station experience. *Jack’s name has been changed to protect confidentiality.

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E S N E F T H E A LT H

How an NHS trust mobilised to get tough on health inequality THE AREAS SERVED BY EAST SUFFOLK AND NORTH ESSEX NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (ESNEFT) RANGE FROM ONE OF ENGL AND’S MOST AFFLUENT VILL AGES TO EUROPE’S THIRD MOST DEPRIVED WARD. HERE DR SHANE GORDON, DIRECT OR OF S TRATEGY AT ESNEFT, EXPL AINS HOW IT IS S TEPPING UP IT S ROLE IN ADDRESSING INEQUALIT Y ON SEVERAL FRONTS.

Fit for Purpose: Tell us more about your organisation SG: We’re a large integrated acute and community trust in the East of England. We serve a population of just under 800,000 people in East Suffolk, including Ipswich and the surrounding rural areas, and in North East Essex, including Colchester and Clacton. We provide a wide range of services from community care, district nursing, rehabilitation, intermediate care, care of the elderly and services in the community; to specialised cancer care and spinal surgery. We have around 11,000 staff, so by far we’re the largest employer in the area we serve. As such, we’re an anchor institution for the community.

We have two main hospital sites in Ipswich and Colchester, and a range of other community hospitals. The communities we serve are very diverse. They include relatively densely populated parts of Ipswich and Colchester, and sparsely populated, rural areas.

The district of Tendering has the fourth oldest average population in England. Suffolk also has quite an age-skewed population. We also have significant variation in deprivation levels. Aldeburgh, for example, is one of the most affluent areas in the country. Then in Jaywick, we have the third most deprived ward in Europe.

What are the challenges that come with these two extremes?

We work with very contrasting groups of patients. In Tendring, life expectancy is significantly below national averages, particularly male life expectancy – and it actually looks to have declined over the last five years. To me, living in a developed, G7-member country, to have life expectancy deteriorating feels wrong. Tendring has poor outcomes from almost all types of cancers, but particularly lung cancer and female cancers, like breast and cervical cancer.

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In the pandemic, the highest mortality per head of population in England was in Tendring.

Employment is well below the England average. Car ownership is in the bottom decile. So all the indicators you can think of are going the wrong way in Tendring, and they’ve got worse in recent years. It’s dreadful that we’ve got these inequalities to start with, but the fact that they have deteriorated so rapidly over the last few years is an indication that our social fabric needs attention.

How do these downward trends impact on your organisation?

Although Tendring represents just over 40 per cent of the population we serve in North East Essex, it represents well over 60 per cent of demand for services in Colchester hospital. In some specialities, it is upward of 70 per cent. So the direct impact on our organisation of the lack of equality in Tendring is material, it’s costly, and uses up huge amounts of our emergency capacity.

There is a moral imperative because of the poor outcomes that our citizens get. But there’s also a business imperative for the NHS to do something about it too.

We have a large workforce and a large presence in the local economy, with significant public investment in our services.

We need to fully utilise the strength that we have in the local economy to play our part in levelling up.

What does levelling up mean from the trust’s perspective?

At the heart of levelling up is equity of outcomes and opportunities. Equity means deliberate, targeted, unequal allocation of resources to ensure that the outcome is equal.

Levelling up [means] rather than the starting point of our public

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services being everybody getting the same offer, it’s a change of focus to the deliberate targeting of the offer, to ensure that everybody gets the same outcome, rather than the same input.

We’ve done some recent analysis of equality showing that if you look at people’s access to outpatient appointments, people who are white British, miss their appointments much less than people who report themselves as other ethnicities. People in more deprived areas also miss them more frequently. People who are white British also cancel their appointments more. They are better at telling us they are not attending. This probably [suggests] something about the level of knowledge about how the system works, understanding the importance of letting us know and access to information on the internet, for example. Doing things about levelling up means being creative about how we give people the tools to get the best outcomes from the services we offer. If they’re not telling us they’re not coming, it’s our fault for not making it as easy for them as we do for the white affluent people that we serve.

Another example is the fact that cancer outcomes are largely driven by late diagnosis of cancer. If you start to scratch the surface of why people might present late, you can look at things like how many GPs there are per head of population.

The poorer the area, the less GPs there are. But also things like getting to Colchester on public transport. There are large parts of Tendring where it takes two buses, and two and a half hours, to get your outpatient appointment. If you have a car, you might be able to get there on your own, but Tendring has the lowest car ownership in the country. So all of these factors go into levelling up; as well as the wellbeing of the local economy, access to employment and an income that might make you more mobile and more able to access digital technology, for example.

What can the trust do to help with wider infrastructural problems like poor transport links?

An example of something we’re doing at the moment is [being part of] a national initiative called Community Diagnostic Hubs. It represents a major investment in diagnostic capacity in England, with the intention of enabling things like faster diagnosis for cancer.

We were invited to [apply to be] an early adopter. We decided that Clacton was the place to put it. There is an existing community hospital there but it’s a dilapidated Victorian estate that has not been modernised greatly to meet the needs of the population because of lack of investment. It’s a really complicated site, but bang in the middle of the most deprived population in our patch.

The total investment last year would represent somewhere in the region of £5m of revenue a year and £7m of capital investment,

with a whole range of diagnostic services that are important to improving health outcomes. They’ll be much more accessible, within 30 minutes by public transport of the whole of the Tendring peninsula. It also creates employment opportunities for the local population. We’ve also put a bid in for community renewal funding to create a training academy attached to the community diagnostic hub, so that we can take people from school and train them up to entry level staff.

How are you spreading opportunities across the areas you serve?

There are around 300 distinct career paths within the trust. We commission training from a range of education providers. We commission clinical roles from the universities of Essex, Suffolk, East Anglia and Anglia Ruskin. They all provide training for staff in the surrounding areas who will provide our workforce in many of those clinical roles. We’re also developing a plan to fully use our apprenticeship levy. We also work very closely with local schools and our local government partners in education. We have a ‘Talent for Care’ team which organises careers fairs, masterclasses and outreach to schools to introduce the idea of careers in healthcare to local children as they’re coming up to choosing their options for GCSE or looking to leave school into employment. We also have a particularly interesting business unit in the organisation called the ICENI centre. It has evolved over 20 years to become one of the leading centres for surgical training in the country. It attracts trainees and experienced clinicians for its courses from every populated continent on the planet. We’ve also expanded it over the last couple of years to look at a range of different specialties and training approaches. We run an annual schools masterclass over six weekends which invites 30 school children who are interested in careers in health to come to the ICENI centre to meet a range of our staff, clinicians and other supporting staff to learn about their careers in the hospital.

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N O R T H E R N I R E L A N D WA T E R

Tapping into the power of purpose NORTHERN IREL AND WATER SUPPLIES AROUND 596 MILLION LITRES OF DRINKING WATER AND CLEANS 3 6 8 M I L L I O N L I T R E S O F W A S T E W A T E R E V E R Y D AY U N D E R T H E S T R A P L I N E O F ‘ D E L I V E R I N G W H A T M A T T E R S ’.

HOWEVER, NI WATER PROVIDES MUCH MORE TO THE COMMUNITIES IT SERVES BY SUPPORTING A NEW ‘ L E V E L L I N G U P ’ A N D S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y S T R AT E GY. F I T F O R P U R P O S E S P O K E T O H E A D O F L E A R N I N G A N D ENGAGEMENT PAUL A GRAHAM TO FIND OUT MORE.

Fit for Purpose: How would you summarise your wider impact on people in Northern Ireland?

PG: We play a vital role as a large public sector employer in the smooth running of our economy, the creation of a flourishing natural environment and the protection of public health in Northern Ireland. We make a positive social impact on the communities we serve through driving economic growth, improving social mobility,

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ensuring accessibility of employment opportunities and educating the water conservators of the future to ensure sustainable supplies for everyone in Northern Ireland. We place a huge focus on employee health and wellbeing as it is only with a happy and healthy workforce, that people are empowered to reach their full potential, and perform their roles to the best of their ability.

Through our people we drive performance for our customers and that’s a win-win for everyone.

In terms of making opportunities accessible to all and creating a diverse workforce, apprenticeships can play an important role. How do you approach them at Northern Ireland Water?

We offer apprenticeships in a number of disciplines which continued despite the pandemic employing 51 new apprentices.

Our apprenticeship academy provides excellent training and development, professional qualifications, a structured career path with excellent promotional prospects, the opportunity to progress to degree pathways, financial support for driving lessons and ultimately a career that really matters. Our approach to apprenticeship recruitment has been quite intentional in helping to attract more females into traditionally male dominated roles. Providing visible female role models helps promotes careers in STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] ‘if you can’t see it, you can’t

be it’. We want to provide those visible role models for other girls to think, ‘I’m interested in that and could do it’. That has been a very successful strategy in increasing our female representation in typically male dominated areas.

Our apprenticeship academy continues to go from strength to strength, providing open and accessible career opportunities across Northern Ireland and excellent development prospects.

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Your positive impact on the lives of the people you serve begins at an early age. Tell us a bit about your work in helping children get off to a good start in life.

In terms of community education and influencing public behaviour, we have a dedicated education team and a doubledecker waterbus mobile classroom which visits hundreds of schools in Northern Ireland every year. The education team delivers our key environmental messages about water efficiency, plastic pollution and ‘bag it and bin it’ reaching almost 40,000 primary school children every year. We speak to primary and secondary school students about the value of water and the use and conservation of water as a natural resource. We educate them on the whole water cycle aligned to the ‘World Around Us’ element of their school curriculum. As the only water company in Northern Ireland, we are in a unique position to influence behaviour from an early age, encourage children to make good choices for our environment and develop the water conservators of the future. We hear a lot of feedback about kids going home and educating their parents about not leaving the tap running when you’re brushing teeth, taking showers rather than baths and so on. Our education team really work hard at bringing that ‘value of water’ message to the population. We also speak to youth groups and community groups, so our work in this area extends beyond school children and into the wider community.

We’re very proud of how our education team was able to pivot during the pandemic towards new ways of continuing the task of educating future generations on environmental messages. That included the use of digital platforms, and also the creation of the ‘Water Wizards After School Club’ during lockdown to inspire water ambassadors of the future. That programme was recently shortlisted for an ‘Excellence in Digital Innovation’ award from Business in the Community.

What impact does your health and wellbeing approach have on performance and your ability to keep hold of the best talent?

Our health and wellbeing strategy directly supports the provision of a safe, happy and healthy workplace. It is absolutely central to making Northern Ireland Water a great place to work. Through encouraging and enabling our people to prioritise their health and adopt healthy habits, we provide the conditions for them to perform their role to the best of their ability, and deliver exceptional standards of customer service to the people of Northern Ireland. We cannot deliver our service without a happy and healthy workforce. Health and wellbeing is absolutely central to the service that we provide.

How have you maintained this as the pandemic impacted on workplaces?

During the pandemic, we had to pivot to more agile ways of listening for example pulse surveys, to ensure our people got the help and support that they need during this challenging time. In response, we created a bespoke seasonal health and wellbeing programme designed with, and for, our employees, which focuses on four key areas of health support: physical, mental, social and financial health. That programme covers a wide range of initiatives including keynote speakers, workshops, seminars, health benefits, social activities and social networks.

We also created brand new hobby buddy networks during lockdown as people were telling us that they were missing the water cooler conversations and the craic of the office. We have lots of work-related networks, but the hobby buddy network connects people over a shared passion or interest. We put the structure and funding around it and we now have 15 hobby buddy networks ranging from everything from beekeeping, genealogy and knitting to the more physical stuff like cold water swimming, running and tennis. These social networks are popping up all over the place and are really important for social health.

We were delighted that our health and wellbeing programme was recognised for not one but two awards by winning; ‘Promoting a Positive Wellbeing Culture 2021’ at Inspire Workplaces Awards and ‘Wellbeing at Work’ at the Business in the Community Awards

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M I D Y O R K S H I R E H O S P I TA L S N H S T R U S T

No half measures for Yorkshire changemaker M I D YO R K S H I R E H O S P I TA L S N H S T RU S T I S C U R R E N T LY ON AN AMBITIOUS JOURNEY TO MAXIMISE ITS POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE COMMUNITIES AND PEOPLE IT SERVES. FIT FOR PURPOSE SPOKE TO FORMER CHIEF EXECUTIVE MARTIN BARKLEY TO FIND OUT MORE.

Fit for Purpose: Tell us more about your efforts to become a more purposeful organisation.

We currently have two improvement plans. One relates to our role as an employer. Initially, we are focusing on trying to improve the experience and career development of our 1,400 staff who have an ethnic minority background. That’s always been important, but the importance of that has continued to grow. In terms of the second improvement plan, as a big provider of healthcare and so-called anchor institution in the local community, what is the contribution that we can make in tackling health inequalities?

This is the first time we’ve had a coherent action plan on this. It started with a board seminar in [spring] last year attended by directors of public health from Wakefield and Kirklees councils.

We serve 360,000 people who live in the Wakefield area and 190,000 people who live in North Kirklees. North Kirklees has a high proportion of people from an ethnic minority background.

Wakefield is a former mining area with lots of poverty and deprivation and, typically, low aspirations. The most important thing is to give children the best possible starting life. The first 1000 days from conception through to the first [few] years of life.

We have invested the best part of £1m in increasing the number of midwives and consultant obstetricians in the trust. We’ve made a significant impact in reducing the number of pregnant women who smoke. We’ve also invested more money in paediatric services too.

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How do you create a level playing field for staff?

About two and a half years ago, there was very clear evidence that staff from an ethnic minority background were underrepresented at junior and middle management grades.

They’re certainly not represented at director level either. Every conversation about this is a learning event which helps to gather new insights and ideas as to what we can do. In conjunction with the Royal College of Nursing, we’ve run some weeklong programmes for registered nurses on band five, which is the grade that you start on when you qualify. Some of the participants have subsequently gained promotion. Some people self-limit because they’ve had bad experiences, or they think ‘being a ward manager or ward sister is not for people like me’.

Some have experienced actual barriers, and for some it’s about enabling them to have confidence that these jobs are for anybody who is competent. We are also running masterclasses on how to write application forms, how to prepare for an interview and how to conduct oneself in an interview. If you go into an interview lacking confidence, it’s all too easy for the interview panel to think ‘if you’re not confident in yourself that you can do the job, why should we be confident that you could do it?’

We’ve set up a network for ethnic minority staff. We have formed a memorandum of understanding with the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin [BAPIO] and its sister organisation, the British Indian Nurses Association [BINA].

It’s important to help new arrivals into England adjust and receive relevant support that is impossible for people like me to give them because I only know the English culture. It’s about helping people learn about the English culture and what to do and how to

do it as opposed to some things that are the way it’s done in the country of their origin and not the way they’re done here.

In our annual staff survey results, we score above average in inequality, diversity and inclusion. But we’ve still got a heck of a long way to go, because ethnic minority staff are still underrepresented at junior, middle and senior management levels. That is changing, with several recent promotions and appointments including at deputy director level.

How did you deal with health inequalities against the backdrop of the pandemic?

In wave one there was a lot of media attention about the fact that COVID seemed to affect people from ethnic minority backgrounds more significantly than white people. During that time, we had a couple of webinars exclusively for BAME staff to talk things through with them and listen.

There’s been far less media attention on the disproportionate impact on people from an ethnic minority background [since].

I think it’s got much more to do with the level of deprivation, poverty and housing conditions. They tend to be the key things.

And the second key thing is underlying health conditions.

Certainly, of the people who’ve died in this trust, diabetes is one of the most prevalent or second most prevalent issues of underlying health conditions of people who’ve died with COVID. Diabetes tends to be a bit more prevalent in people from a South Asian ethnic minority. There is no doubt that COVID has absolutely highlighted the real problems of the causes of health inequalities. I think if we looked at where people who died had resided it would absolutely map across to IMD where there’d be a disproportionate number of admissions and disproportionate number of deaths. Having said all of that, age is the biggest factor of whether people live or die with COVID. The average age of death has been 79.

M I D Y O R K S H I R E H O S P I TA L S N H S T R U S T

Have you witnessed any particular health inequalities through the trust?

We’ve analysed waiting lists, by ethnicity and by IMD [Index of Multiple deprivation] and there are differences. Typically, ethnic minority patients wait 10 per cent longer than white patients, but at the moment, we don’t know why. At face value, there are less patients from an ethnic minority background waiting. But we also have about 12 per cent of ethnicity not known, which might skew the figures. On the other hand, we need to look at service utilisation. Is it that we’ve got more people admitted as an emergency from ethnic minority population which is why they are on a waiting list? Is it that they enjoy better health?

Is it related to family infrastructure that makes a difference to people’s health? We are on a journey of discovery at this moment in time, but at least we are now looking at these issues through the lens of inequalities.

What is the significance of being an anchor institution?

First and foremost, it is about our role as an employer. Virtually all 9,200 staff live in the area that we serve. As an employer it’s about providing a safe working environment that is supportive of staff, ensuring they enjoy their work and have opportunities to develop their careers here, and are proud of where they work.

Secondly, it means better engagement with the local communities that we serve. The third aspect is looking at where we buy goods.

Is there more that we can do to procure the goods we buy locally to support local producers and industry, as well as reduce the environmental impact. These are the types of things we need to look at as an anchor institution.

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NORTH U M BR IA U N I VE R S ITY

SPOTLIGHT ON PROFESSOR ANDREW WATHEY AND NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY

Widening higher education participation in the North East THE NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND HAS ONE OF THE LOWEST LEVELS OF UNIVERSIT Y PARTICIPATION IN THE UK. NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSIT Y IS TRYING TO UNLOCK SOME OF THIS TALENT AS WE REPORT HERE. Higher education participation in the North East of England is a particular challenge - the level of participation in the region is one of the worst in the country at around 33 per cent, compared to a national average of 38 per cent. In London, the participation rate rises to nearly 50 per cent, highlighting the regional disparities that still exist today.

In the last ten years Northumbria University has made a twin investment in further increasing the quality of its teaching and facilities, improving information about the opportunities it offers, and making the University easier to access for all. This has led to an increase in student numbers and a far greater level of social diversity. The gap in participation between the top and bottom socio-economic quintiles now stands at only five per cent.

Barriers to higher education participation still exist and are often a combination of complex factors. In certain areas of the North East going to university is still not considered an option for many young people, who might not have role models within their peer groups or families that have gone down that route. Growing up in areas of high deprivation also traditionally makes it much harder for young people to progress to higher education.

The North East employment strategy is now for more and better jobs, which highlights the need for a higher proportion of qualified graduates. The importance of participation, therefore,

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is particularly important for the region as a whole as it looks to move forward economically. According to HESA data, Northumbria University puts more graduates into professional managerial roles in the North East than any other university and more than the whole Russell Group combined. This amounts to around 2,100 graduates a year but the University recognises that there is more to be done to increase this number. Northumbria also places around 1,000 graduates per year in professional and managerial roles elsewhere in the country.

Northumbria University has always had a focus on widening participation in the local area and currently around half of applicants are from the North East. While participation has

increased there is still work to be done to ensure that this is spread evenly across the country and that low-participation areas have the opportunity to level-up. Within the North East there are many more young people who would benefit from going to university. Through its outreach programmes, Northumbria University is attempting to realise the potential of those from under-represented communities who can go on to play vital roles in society.

Northumbria University’s outreach programmes include a range of interactive activities with hands-on learning and workshops for children, teachers and parents or carers.

While coronavirus has impacted the programmes, they have continued to be delivered virtually.

Outreach starts in year five with the Junior Evolve programme which focuses on raising awareness and aspiration to higher education. A range of events and activities are delivered at the correct level to support the development of key life and study skills.

The Evolve programme is aimed at year 12 and 13 students with activity tailored to the specific needs of schools and students. The University offers guidance, support and information to help prospective applicants, their teachers, parents and carers make informed choices. The activity is delivered by Northumbria University’s team of graduate ambassadors who have first-hand experience of studying.

Workshops are delivered on a range of topics, both on wider

NORTH U M BR IA U N I VE R S ITY

higher education life, study, options and applications, and specific sessions on Northumbria.

The University also runs a supported entry scheme, NU Entry, to ensure a fair and transparent admissions process. NU Entry is a structured scheme for students in their first year of sixth form or college who meet specific criteria. Eligibility criteria include the following; care leavers, care responsibilities, entitled to free school meals or from an area with a low progression rate to university, as well as other specific detailed criteria.

Students participating in the NU Entry scheme will get the chance to earn 16 NU entry points, which are the equivalent to UCAS points when applying to Northumbria University. These outreach programmes ensure that the University is reaching those from under-represented communities and giving them an equal opportunity to access higher education. Northumbria University is committed to raising educational aspirations and recruiting high quality students regardless of background.

Like many organisations Northumbria had to react quickly when Covid-19 hit the UK. All of its student learning went online in three days, thanks largely to its earlier investment in the right technology to enable online delivery. The University has had a relentless focus on its students and their interests throughout the pandemic, both in and out of the classroom.

The pandemic has taught Northumbria University a lot about the disparities that exist and how these manifest themselves in students. Digital poverty was identified as a potential problem early in the pandemic, leading to the University providing laptops and grants to students so that they could continue to study.

During the pandemic Northumbria has not seen a fall in academic attainment and the University believes that it has shown the value of the student residential experience and being among peer groups. Only time will tell the true impact of the pandemic and how fast the economy will recover but often these periods of significant change are when big steps forward can be made.

Increasing higher education participation levels in the North East of England needs a collaborative approach, starting with work in schools and moving through university and onto employers.

It is vital that these links exist so that graduates can be utilised correctly to modernise the economy as it is rebuilt. Clearly businesses and communities are important, and Northumbria University understands the role it can have as a delivery agent, as well as using the knowledge, skills and expertise at its disposal.

The role of universities in increasing social mobility should not be underestimated and Northumbria University is committed to going further to widen participation in the North East of England.

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PEN NON G ROUP

Spotlight on Adele Barker and Pennon Group EMPLOYERS WHO WORK TO INCREASE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEIR EMPLOYEES AND COMMUNITIES WILL ALSO STRENGTHEN THEIR OWN BUSINESSES, AS ADELE BARKER EXPLAINS TO JUSTINE GREENING. Adele Barker’s commitment to giving people opportunities is driven by her own personal experience.

She suffered an illness three years ago which left her partially sighted but that hasn’t been allowed to stop her pursuing her career as Chief People Officer of Pennon Group, which owns South West Water.

She says: “The support I got from my colleagues at work, my family and my support network has just reaffirmed my faith that whatever challenge - disability or difference - you have should never stand in the way of going after what you want.’’

Now she’s part of an organisation working to maximise the ability of people in the region it serves to overcome their own challenges.

South West Water is committed to bringing in 500 new apprentices over the next five years and is a signatory of the government’s Kickstart Scheme, which provides funding to employers to create jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds on universal credit.

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It is now supporting 50 disadvantaged young adults who were having difficulty finding employment elsewhere.

“And you know what, they are some of the brightest, most engaged people I have ever met, so I’m really proud of the work we have been able to do there,’’ says Adele.

The company gives the £500 it gets from the government for every Kickstarter to the young person once they have completed their placement.

Adele explains: “We are doing that because we want them to stay with us, but also, if we can get them through that whole placement, they stand a much better chance of getting the next great job if that’s not with us.’’

The company also has plans to eradicate water poverty by 2025 and is helping to educate its more vulnerable customers about some of the financial benefits available to them and, particularly during the pandemic, has pointed them towards additional available benefits.

“It might help them to pay our bill, but, more importantly, it has helped to make life in very difficult circumstances that little bit more bearable.’’

She’s convinced that doing the right thing in this way not only benefits individuals and communities but also the business. At a time when society places increasing importance on corporate

PEN NON G ROUP

social responsibility it helps with brand perception and this is good for recruitment.

So, South West Water has been working with Ofwat on plans for additional investment for a green recovery which will create 500 local jobs and it has been educating young people on the importance of water as a scarce resource.

This year it signed up to become a Living Wage Foundation employer for the benefit of its own employees, who number more than 2,000, and nearly 5,000 in its supply chain.

Also, to engage with its customers, the company is encouraging them to become shareholders and one in 16 households in the South West now holds a stake in the business. It has also set up community funds for projects which support individuals or groups with schemes to save water, such as putting water butts on allotments.

Covid-19 has been a challenge but it has allowed the company to work even harder on its social responsibility agenda. It provides critical infrastructure and many of its employees were key workers.

“We recognised that some people were not going to be able to work, through no fault of their own, because they were either home-schooling or caring for someone who has got Covid or they have got symptoms of it themselves,’’ says Adele.

“The only right decision for us has been to continue to pay everybody full pay irrespective of the reason why they have not been in work. We have not furloughed any one and we thought about our wider responsibilities to the community.’’

She adds: “The worst of times brings out the best in people and I have certainly seen that right across our business. We have emerged as much stronger, a much more collegiate business, where collaboration and care for one another has really come to the fore.’’

The company is not going to rush into any decisions, but it has taken on board the lesson that its staff can work flexibly and productively.

She says: “We see the flexibility in our employees and the way that they have stood up and delivered under very difficult circumstances, so why wouldn’t we want to afford them the opportunity for that flexibility going forward?’’

It has also validated Adele’s choice ten years ago when she made the career move into HR. She explains: “The formative part of my career was spent in customer services and what you realise after – and I’m almost embarrassed to say it now – is that delivering a great customer service is all about having great employees. If you have great employees that you trust and that you treat in the right way, they will do the right things for customers.’’

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U N I VE R S ITY OF NORTHAM PTON

Levelling Up Law Why at University of Northampton we believe it is the next vital puzzle piece in equality of opportunity for law students

CHOOSING TO STUDY L AW AT UNIVERSIT Y IS FOR MANY PEOPLE A LIFECHANGING E X P E R I E N C E . A S A N E W R E C R U I T T O T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O R T H A M P T O N I W A S P A R T I C U L A R LY ATTRACTED TO THE ROLE OF DEAN OF BUSINESS AND L AW BEC AUSE OF THE SUPPORTIVE BUT ASPIRATIONAL ENVIRONMENT THAT THE UNIVERSIT Y PROVIDES FOR IT S STUDENT S.

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“

We see this agenda as

U N I VE R S ITY OF NORTHAM PTON

As an educator my focus has always been very much centered on my personal ethos and passion around aspiration and transformation, which in turn is very firmly rooted in my own personal experiences of higher education and my early career experiences in the law profession.

I have always aspired to be the best I can possibly be and have worked hard to achieve my goals. However, I came to learn early on in my career that there are times when you can aspire and work incredibly hard but that it is not always enough, particularly if opportunity and support are not available to help you achieve your aspirations. I entered academia not simply because I wanted to teach law, but because my own personal experience was evidence that if opportunity and support are provided, HE can be a truly transformational experience. It can encourage students to aspire and to develop the skills that enable them to achieve their goals.

My personal motivating factor has always been people: supporting, developing and promoting others is key to my energy and inspiration.

The University of Northampton’s ethos and super supportive environment delivers this to the fullest extent. It enables our students not only in terms of their academic studies but in supporting them to aspire to be the best they choose to be (and choice is key here as it provides the autonomy upon which the foundations of aspiration grow) and as importantly by providing them with opportunities to build their social capital and consequently networks whilst studying.

The University like many others in the country with a diverse range of law students, many of whom are mature, second career students or from ethnic minority or more disadvantaged backgrounds. These students are hugely capable and talented and very often have made a committed choice to study at the University of Northampton due to family commitments, financial or personal circumstances. This is where often the embryonic stages which contribute to the lack of social mobility. Not only is opportunity not available to these students but many of them lack the confidence to believe that they can achieve the ‘heady heights’ in a law career seeing it as something beyond reach.

At Northampton ‘super supportive’ is one of key values so not only do we support our students to achieve the best they choose in terms of their degrees but we work hard to support all other aspects of their learning experience to build that confidence to aspire and to seek opportunity in places they would not have previously explored.

providing opportunity not only for social mobility but for continued aspiration for our students.

We can and do support our students in all these ways both during and after their studies with us. However without continued support and opportunity that confidence and aspiration can fade and wither. We know that, despite movements within the law profession over the past decade and the professional bodies supporting the widening access to the profession agenda with developments in legal education and the acceptance of alternative routes, the playing field is still not level in terms of both access and development and promotion within the profession.

The Social Mobility pledge to which the University of Northampton is signed up and committed is the first step in the continued support and opportunity for ours and other HE’s students. However what can truly start the process of providing the next vital piece to ensuring equality of opportunity in the law profession is the Pledge’s first sector wide initiative - Levelling up Law. Led by former Education Secretary Minister Justine Greening and Chaired

by Former MP and lawyer Seema Kennedy OBE, a number of City of London Law Society member Firms are working with several HE institutions to develop an Operational Action plan for the legal sector to boost social mobility within the profession. We are extremely proud to be one of those HE institutions as this work will build not only on our transformational approach but enable our continued commitment to social impact in our local communities and far beyond. But most importantly, although it is in the early stages, we see this agenda as providing opportunity not only for social mobility but for continued aspiration for our students.

By Karen Jones, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Northampton.

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Plotting a course for a fairer society C O U N C I L L O R N I C K K E L LY, L E A D E R O F P LY M O U T H C I T Y COUNCIL, SPEAKS TO FIT FOR PURPOSE ABOUT THE LOCAL AUTHORIT Y’S ROLE I N L E V E L L I N G U P.

Fit for Purpose: As one of the largest employers in Plymouth, how do you ensure job opportunities are open to all?

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criteria of a job role. Once in post, our Reasonable Adjustments Policy ensures that our employees can access support like specialised equipment or flexible working.

As a long-standing naval city, the Council is committed to supporting its armed forces community. To this end we have signed the Armed Forces Covenant so when a service leaver applies for a job, they will be able to indicate their status on their application form. Provided they meet basic criteria, they will be guaranteed an interview.

Plymouth has higher levels of deprivation than many other parts of the UK, with two areas falling within the most deprived one per cent in England and 28 areas within the 10 per cent most deprived in England. Over 32 per cent of working age adults in Plymouth who are economically inactive are classed as long-term sick compared to only 23.6 per cent nationally.

Our People Strategy outlines how we will be an organisation that is recognised as an employer of choice, with great leadership, where we value inclusivity and diversity, and where we have the right people in the right roles, retain them and grow them.

Things have been difficult for many employees in both the public and private sectors during the pandemic. How have you managed staff wellbeing?

The Council was recently awarded the Silver Level of Wellbeing at Work Award, which demonstrates our commitment to promoting employee wellbeing. We have built upon our existing Wellbeing Champions programme and committed to having 60 Wellbeing Champions across the Council in order to help ‘break the silence’ on mental health, providing support, guidance and signposting and aiming to tackle the perceived stigma around mental health issues. This has been particularly important throughout all the work-related changes that have happened during COVID and where staff have had to adapt to different ways of working.

And what are some of the ways you engage and reach specific groups disproportionately affected by unfair barriers to getting on in life?

In 2019 we became a Disability Confident Employer which recognises our work to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access job opportunities and are supported to reach their potential once in post. Under the Disability Confident Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we offer a guaranteed interview to any candidates who are disabled and who demonstrate that they can meet the essential

Many of the relationships with our partners have been developed over a number of years and this has enabled us to build trust and mutual respect.

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In terms of addressing the levelling up challenge, how important is it that the Council collaborates with other organisations within Plymouth?

Collaboration with partners is incredibly important for the Council. We work very closely with partners through a range of thematic partnerships, for example around the economy, health and wellbeing, and community safety as well as working collaboratively on projects. In 2015, the Council entered into an arrangement with the NHS local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to create one budget for healthcare that was worth almost £0.5bn at the time.

We wanted to reduce the barriers that prevented taking a person-centred, system-wide approach. The pooled budget included the CCG budget for health services, our own social care budget and public health grants, and a range of Council funding for other services such as education, skills and sport and leisure.

We were one of the first areas in the country to do this.

We’ve built on this over the years and recently Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, visited Plymouth and commented on how impressed he was with the strength of partnership working in the city. He was able to see first-hand a great example of this with the work of the Plymouth Alliance, which is a joint commissioning arrangement tackling complex issues such as homelessness, drug and alcohol misuse, mental illness and offending.

Many of the relationships with our partners have been developed over a number of years and this has enabled us to build trust and mutual respect, and [shown] that we can enter into joint projects where sharing risk is vital. Another good example of this is the £7.6m upgrade of the derelict Devonport Market Hall to create the first immersive video dome of its kind in Europe, as well as

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And coming out of the crisis, Plymouth certainly has a bright future…

We have some great opportunities that will help to boost the prosperity of the city in the coming years, these include more, and higher value jobs in marine autonomy, health tech and digital technologies particularly linked with the creative sector.

We have also been selected as one of the UK’s first freeport areas. We expect this will bring more than 1,000 new jobs in the first two years and over £100m investment. We are working closely with businesses and our education and training providers to make sure that local people have the right skills to be able to take advantage of these opportunities.

a creative and collaborative workspace for digital businesses and a social hub for people of all ages in the community.

Education is clearly key to levelling up. How do you ensure young people get a good start to life?

Plymouth’s secondary education attainment levels are above the national average, reversing the situation from two years ago when they had been below. However, currently due to the pause on OFSTED inspections between March 2020 and September 2021, only 53 per cent of secondary schools have a recorded judgement of good or better in their overall effectiveness, compared to 76 per cent nationally. As the inspections of all schools continues we anticipate that this will improve and be more in line with national trends, with a stronger local education partnership and collaboration in place. Improving educational attainment remains vital so that all young people in Plymouth have the best opportunity to succeed.

We set up the Plymouth Education Board, which is chaired by the Council’s Chief Executive. It is a place-based collaboration, working with the Regional Schools Commissioner and multi academy trusts.

We have been selected as one of four areas nationally to share a £10m Department for Education funding pot in recognition of the challenges we face and the work we’ve been doing to tackle them. This investment will support local schools in joining stronger academy trusts, which will drive up standards by sharing the expertise of schools that have more experienced leaders.

We have worked with employers and sectors to identify around 8,000 new jobs that are in the pipeline for the next 18 months. Based on this we can make sure that local skills training is geared around what our businesses need.

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F D E R BY

Campus catalyst PROFESSOR KATHRYN MITCHELL, V I C E - C H A N C E L L O R O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F D E R B Y, SHARES INSIGHTS ON THE INSTITUTION’S ROLE IN THE GREAT LEVELLING UP EFFOR T.

Fit for Purpose: As a university, your positive influence on the lives of young people begins at an early age, doesn’t it?

PKM: Yes. We have a strong approach to how we work from early years and schools, to address social mobility. It’s not just about how you get to university, but also working locally and regionally in understanding how the university provides that

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mobility opportunity. Looking from early years and across the school system, we’ve done significant work on SEND, supporting the most disadvantaged in terms of social mobility.

We also lead DANCOP [Derbyshire and Nottingham Collaborative Outreach Programme]. But the most successful thing Derby has done is Progress to Success, which is run by our own widening access team. That has specifically looked at BAME, people who were eligible for free school meals and progression in POLAR4 [a classification of an area in terms of young participation in higher education]. Our ambition has been to address the attainment gap in the number of those showing an interest in further or higher education and offer them the opportunity [to come here]. We found that often people didn’t even consciously apply because they didn’t understand why, how or what.

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How do you change those circumstances?

For me, it’s not about opportunity, because opportunity just means that you get information. It’s about choice. To make a choice, you have to be knowledgeable. So, Progress to Success is about the whole university’s mission to allow choice. When the government tells me not everyone can go into all these nice jobs, I don’t mind that as long as people have had the choice to do so, and they haven’t been disadvantaged by lack of choice. We are part of Derby Opportunity Area, which means we are part of a community [focused on] early years to age 25. On the opportunity area board, we realised many of our young children hadn’t seen people go to work. A normal working day was not part of their home life. We needed to not just have a boring lecture about being a fireman.

We needed real firemen to teach that bit of the curriculum. We start at an early age in terms of our role in the opportunity area in setting up the right sorts of impactful projects. We embed industry partners into the curriculum. They talk about a day in the life of their job and the children play that out. The fundamental thing was that the children hadn’t seen work before. Lots of projects [elsewhere] only start at age nine, but that’s too late in Derby.

You’ve got to start early so that the children do see that there are lots of opportunities for them.

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If you don’t have a holistic approach to learning structure and opportunity, I don’t think it can work.

What about young people approaching school-leaving age?

Post 16 is fundamental for the University of Derby because we do offer approaches through apprenticeship models, at level two and three, but also level four, as an alternative to a degree with the same outcome. We work with our industry partners to make sure that those experiences mean that through an apprenticeship route, you are as academically assured as if you’d done a traditional degree.

We’ve applied for Institute of Technology status in partnership with our further education college in Derby and also Loughborough University and College as a joint venture.

To me, an institute of technology breaks down the barrier between colleges and universities. In terms of creating positive destinations, you don’t just leave [education] at 16 and you could get to a place that’s similar to someone that leaves at 18.

We also work with the Higher Technical Qualifications, which are coming online soon. Another piece of work we’ve done is that one of our professors, a further education researcher, has looked at the importance of technology and workplace learning.

He has found that, for further education to be successful, industry has got to be much more embedded in that education and training element. Instead of just sending them for a day a week, industry partners need to be fundamentally part of the teaching academy. I think that’s fundamental to social mobility.

How important is partnership working in attacking the levelling up challenge?

It’s fundamental to being successful in levelling up. One of the most important things I’ve ever done is chair the opportunity area. What I hadn’t realised was the complexity of having to work across all these boundaries. When I first got in, what people from industry would say is ‘we’d very much like to help but we want to select the best’. They now see their role as fundamentally being part of the infrastructure in raising knowledge and providing examples of real opportunities that people can tangibly access. If you don’t have a holistic approach to learning structure and opportunity, I don’t think it can work. Europe is slightly better at this in that they interact their regional environments with technology, higher education and schools as a holistic part of a young person’s environment. Ours is probably too fragmented and therefore we end up sticking plasters on that don’t work over time.

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SPOTLIGHT ON PROFESSOR ROB WARNER VICE-CHANCELLOR OF PLYMOUTH MARJON UNIVERSIT Y

Levelling up for 180 years: a radical attitude P LY M O U T H M A R J O N U N I V E R S I T Y H A S R E V O L U T I O N A RY RO O T S . I T WA S F O R M E D W I T H T H E MERGER OF T WO TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGES: ST MARK’S COLLEGE IN CHELSEA AND ST JOHN’S C O L L E G E I N B A T T E R S E A , F O U N D E D I N 18 4 0 A N D 18 41 . E A C H W A S F O U N D E D B Y A R A D I C A L THINKER, NOT AFRAID TO FIGHT AGAINS T THE ES TABLISHMENT. HERE PROFESSOR ROB WARNER EXPL AINS HOW ITS HISTORY SHAPED ITS LEVELLING UP APPROACH Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, the founder of St Mark’s College, was lambasted for his dangerous experimental project in which he decided to school young men from the local workhouse, and train them to become teachers. “To teach a pauper child to write was regarded… as not simply preposterous but dangerous … like putting the torch of knowledge into the hands of rick-burners.”

Derwent Coleridge, the founder of St John’s College in Battersea was accused of giving “the masses” an education that was too good for them. In 1862 he wrote, “I will never consent to educate down to any standard, to avoid an imaginary risk of inconvenient excellence”. It was the Victorian equivalent of today’s viral blaze on Twitter: he wasn’t putting up with such nonsense.

Both Coleridge and Kay ignored the pearl-clutchers, acted on their beliefs, and continued to deliver excellence, no matter how inconvenient those in power felt it to be. These revolutionary founders recognised that being privileged didn’t make you smarter: that being poor made you neither unworthy, nor unable. And their experiments weren’t just in kindness or charity for those individuals. They led to a social transformation, demonstrating that education for all is a societal good.

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Our founders had to fight against those who felt too much was being spent on education for the masses. It’s a fight worth remembering as today Plymouth Marjon University, and others like it, continue to stand firm in delivering transformational change.

We do this because every person who is part of our community believes the same thing: that everyone deserves a good education, and that education is good for society. Our common belief leads us not just to talk about this, but to act, just as our founders did 180 years ago.

Our success isn’t seen just in individual projects but in every part of what we do: it’s a revolutionary attitude that still runs through us, with every member of staff thinking up new and innovative ways to make a difference to the success of individual students.

Our research is based around transforming lives, for example, considering how to support rural and coastal schools, how to give independence to those with long-term conditions, or how youth work enables children to succeed.

We focus our student recruitment in areas where few people tend to go to university. We enable them to make the right

1 Smith, F., 1923. The Life of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. p.47. 2 Coleridge, D., 1862. The Teachers of the People – a Tract for the times. p.15.

meet peers and to get their questions answered. We help students with disabilities to get support. We talk openly about successes: we encourage students to claim their victories and be proud of what they have achieved, because we know that daring to dream is a crucial first step in applying for university.

When students apply, our goal is to spot possibility rather than check grades. We know grades are not the full measure of a human being.

Our accommodation on site, our food and our sports centre are fairly priced so there is no elitist group. Our sports teams welcome everyone. Our campus is open and green with different social learning spaces, so everyone can find the place they feel they belong.

Our academic programmes work in small class sizes, more akin to an Oxbridge tutorial than a huge Russell Group lecture with hundreds of students. They are full of debate and discussion, challenge and conversation. They are human.

And they work. Students come from varied backgrounds, adding to the learning. In a small class, everyone gets involved.

Academics quickly assess their students’ strengths, and where they need to develop. Their feedback goes well beyond grading assignments, but is about the whole person. This is an ultimate developmental experience.

The result of this is that students have enormous appreciation of what they have. It’s a virtuous circle: staff feel like they make a difference and are appreciated, and so work all the more passionately to help students.

This is hard to measure in numerical terms. But it only takes a day or so in an institution like ours to understand. It’s in the heartbeat of the place; it’s in the captains of the sports teams who can’t believe how far they’ve come; it’s in the student speakers at graduation who say they were too shy to talk when they arrived; it’s in the social media posts as students share their first job offer, astonished their dreams are coming true. It’s in the tears in the eyes of the families at graduation, knowing their kids have gone above and beyond anything they dreamed of.

In the South West, only 31 per cent of 18 year olds go to university.

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decisions for GCSEs and A-levels. We run classes to support them to get the right grades. We produce materials, speak at assemblies and run events to demystify higher education, and to help people practically to apply.

Before students arrive, we run pre-arrival sessions to help them to

When students apply, our goal is to spot possibility rather than check grades.

Those who do are beating the odds; they are putting their heads above the parapet. Many are fighting the nay-sayers who don’t believe it’s for them. But still they come.

When we ask students what drives them, the biggest response, with 87 per cent of respondents agreeing, is I want to help others in my job. It’s no surprise: our students are decent, hardworking, caring people. Helping others isn’t something they do to look good on their CV. It’s done because they care.

But the second most important driver for our students is also fascinating: job security. Not salary. In the South West, a higher proportion of people are employed in occupations associated with low pay than in England as a whole, a higher proportion are self-employed, and a higher proportion work part-time. Insecurity is present and real. Our students are not looking for huge salaries.

They are looking for choice: the choice to earn a steady salary, to provide financial security for their families, and to give back to others in the place they call home.

Our transformational impact should not be measured by how many of our students head to London to seek six figure salaries. It is in the thousands of students who have passed through Marjon, and are out making a difference daily to the lives of others. Teachers, youth workers, allied health professionals, therapists, coaches, mentors, working in the rural and coastal areas of the South West, and across the world, choosing to work in places and roles where the difference they make is as profound as their own journey. They come to Marjon because they care. They leave Marjon enabled to make a difference.

3 Stevens, H., Climie, G. and Holmes, J., 2020. Social Mobility Research Brief. Exeter: University of Exeter on behalf of Heart of the Southwest Local Enterprise Partnership, p.15.

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SOLENT UN IVERSITY

Sailing ahead WORLD CL ASS MARITIME COURSES AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAMMES ARE AMONG T H E L E V E L L I N G U P D R I V E R S AT S O L E N T U N I V E R S I T Y, AS FIT FOR PURPOSE DISCOVERS IN CONVERSATION WITH VICE-CHANCELLOR PROFESSOR KAREN STANTON.

Fit for Purpose: How would you describe the University’s role in levelling up?

KS: The mission for the University’s new 2025 strategy is to ensure that our students are work ready, world ready and future ready. We see our role as making a major contribution to the future success of all the students at Solent, whether that be students taking an undergraduate degree, a postgraduate qualification or an apprenticeship.

We are also the University supplying cadets into commercial shipping and [other] maritime industries as well, so we have a major role supporting that too.

We see it as our responsibility to really ensure that students have

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gained the best possible skill set to enable them to either enter the world of work, set up their own business or to further a career in education with the necessary skills. We know the world of work is changing and so it is our responsibility to ensure that our curriculum reflects what employers are going to need in the future.

And keeping up with those needs can be a huge challenge – how do you do that?

We’ve established several advisory boards across the subject areas and disciplines that we teach. They are made up of individuals from business and industry and [spanning] the public, private and third sectors, including voluntary sector organisations. Their role is to help us to ensure that the curriculum we develop in any subject area is aligned to the skills they want to see and develop in the workplace going forward.

In addition to that, we make sure all the courses we offer have an internship or a placement programme as a key component. We’ve got great relationships with employers, not only within the city but the region as a whole, to ensure that we can deliver on our promise to students to make sure that they’ve got a work-ready experience they can take forward once they leave us.

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Are apprenticeships important to you as an impactful organisation?

Yes. We offer a number of higher and degree level apprenticeships. We really focus on those professions where we’ve got major skills, for example in health, construction and engineering. I’m really pleased to say we’ve just been awarded a major grant from the Department for Education to offer higher technical qualifications too.

You really excel at fostering entrepreneurship. What’s the secret?

We’re currently ranked third in the country on our ability to encourage entrepreneurship as a University. This demonstrates the work we do to ensure each of our courses has an element of entrepreneurship embedded within them. We must translate what it means to be enterprising to different subject areas. Our ‘Solent Futures’ initiative provides students with a whole range of support, advice and resources on how to set up your business and enter the world of work. In the last annual count before the pandemic, we had 163 small businesses set up by our students.

We have a University entrepreneurial lead, funded by the Royal Society. We also have a whole range of individuals that come in

and work with the students. We find that our alumni base are probably the best champions we’ve got. They can really demonstrate to the students what it requires to take that next step to set up your own business. As a University we have a responsibility to show what the options are for students. The world of work is changing significantly. It might be about going into a profession or about going into public service or setting up your own business.

And do you also work closely with schools and colleges to encourage social mobility?

We have our Step into Success programme for schoolaged children between the ages of five and 13. It focuses on raising aspirations and attainment, and progression into higher education. We work with different year groups within different programmes. We help with exam preparation; we talk about why GCSEs matter and a whole host of other work within schools and colleges. We also do a lot of work within the community. We run a programme called Health for Her for women from a BAME background, which is all about health, nutrition and exercise. Prior to the pandemic we worked with that group within our sports facilities. But during the pandemic we raised funds to issue gym and exercise equipment so that participants could complete the programme virtually.

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SOLENT UN IVERSITY Are you well connected to the local communities which would benefit most from levelling up?

Although our reach is global and we have a cohort of international students, we are an institution that is very much based in the community and of that community.

A significant number of students we recruit are, of course, local and regional. We draw in a lot of students from a widening access background that wouldn’t necessarily have chosen University as their first option. We’re proud of all the statistics which demonstrate that we are drawing from a whole range of disadvantaged backgrounds into higher education. Those communities in particular, like the city of Southampton itself, had their challenges during the pandemic. We continued to reach out to local communities during the pandemic through a whole host of virtual classes and resources, just to make sure that we were still really raising aspirations.

Would you say the pandemic has created more barriers to social mobility among your students?

Yes. One of the things we really focused on during the pandemic was the issue of digital literacy, and ensuring that our students, and indeed staff, all had access to the equipment they needed. We allocated a significant amount of money to that, and we were also successful in [utilising] the government support we received, to ensure that all our students had access. We also invested a lot into the software we needed to really ensure the quality of the learning that we delivered was excellent.

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You put a lot of emphasis as a University on building leadership skills. Can you elaborate please?

One example is our work with an organisation called Business South, which represents a whole range of employers across the region. We have engaged with business leaders as part of the Business South Champions Programme, who really want to give up their time to talk to students, providing advice, discussing opportunities and talking about their own personal experience.

Students really benefit from hearing from people who have been successful. The whole concept of leadership has really changed through the pandemic in terms of what kind of qualities people want to see in their leaders across different organisations in different sectors. That has given us a good opportunity to reflect on that as a University. Also, flipping it the other way round, we ran a Small Business Leadership Programme throughout the pandemic, and we’ve just been successful in gaining government funding to deliver the Help to Grow programme with small businesses. That is about bringing in people from SMEs and helping them to develop their leadership skills, make their business more resilient and grow it.

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S TA F F O R D S H I R E U N I V E R S I T Y

SPOTLIGHT ON PROFESSOR LIZ BARNES CBE DL, FORMER VICE-CHANCELLOR AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY

Spreading opportunity to all STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSIT Y WORKS C L O S E LY W I T H O T H E R O RG A N I S AT I O N S WITHIN S T OKE-ON-TRENT, S TAFF ORDSHIRE AND WIDER TO ENSURE THAT OPPORTUNIT Y IS S P R E A D E Q U A L LY, A S W E R E P O R T H E R E .

Staffordshire University’s main campus is based in Stoke-onTrent although it serves the wider county, as well as having a campus in London. The partnerships that are formed in the different locations are crucial in allowing the University to spread opportunity to those that may not have normally had the chance to access higher education. It doesn’t matter which campus you are at, there is an ethos of social mobility that runs through everything that Staffordshire University does.

There is a particularly low progression for young people into university in Stoke-on-Trent with just 16 and 19 per cent of young people accessing higher education, compared with under 30 per cent in Staffordshire more broadly. Therefore it is especially important that the university builds links with schools and the local authorities to reach young people and open up the opportunity of higher education.

However Staffordshire University’s work to raise aspirations and increase social mobility goes much further. Professor Barnes is a co-chair of the Stoke-on-Trent Opportunity Area, part of the government’s plan to level up outcomes for children and young people in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country.

Staffordshire University is also represented on the Children’s Services Improvement Board and there is ongoing work to

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increase the number of care leavers entering university. There is also a joint initiative to recruit more social workers and teachers, recognising the need to develop local people for the careers which will impact future generations. The University is also working with local authorities on the health and wellbeing of the community as a whole.

Throughout the pandemic, relationships with local stakeholders were strengthened. While a lot of this was public health crisis management, these closer relationships will benefit social mobility in the region moving forward. There is a local redundancy task force which Staffordshire University is involved with to ensure that it can help businesses and employees with the recovery.

Staffordshire University also collaborates closely with local businesses. During coronavirus many SMEs struggled and needed to pivot and be creative to ensure that they can continue to operate. The University has ‘entrepreneurs in residence’ who have provided mentoring and support for these businesses to support them through this difficult period. This work is ongoing and the University is setting up micro-credentials to be able to provide short courses and learning for those already in work, recognising the demand for new and improved skills.

Employer relations extend well beyond the county, with national and international relationships providing important learning opportunities for students. The relationships ensure that students gain placements and work experience in a variety of industries. A number of these employers also work as mentors with students, which is especially important for those from under-represented groups. Nearly 50 per cent of students have multiple indices of

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disadvantage, meaning that they often don’t know where to seek advice or opportunities for work experience.

As might be expected from a higher education institution where nearly half of students are from widening participation backgrounds, Staffordshire University has a far-reaching outreach strategy. Outreach extends from primary school right through to mature people who want to return to education. The University is a sponsor of a multi-academy trust with 20 different schools and engages with them in a variety of ways, including activities for youngsters interested in attending university and CPD for teachers.

Staffordshire University also runs an art and design Saturday Club for those from under-represented groups within the community.

This gives year 10 students the opportunity to explore creative disciplines at the University and get a real understanding of higher education. The University also has close links with further education institutions which enable students to gain higher education qualifications while studying at their local FE college.

There is a significant proportion of people in the region without level 3 or 4 qualifications and support is needed to get them back into education and upskilled so that they can find jobs. The University has a relationship with the YMCA North Staffordshire

where it offers scholarships for people who have received support from the YMCA to turn their lives around, including many who may have been sleeping on the streets. As well as scholarships, courses are run to help them progress into the university.

Forty-two per cent of students at Staffordshire University are mature learners which presents different challenges for both outreach and delivery of courses. The University’s Step Up to Higher Education programme prepares mature learners for the university application process and how to study. Many of these will not have been in education for many years, so it is vital that they are given the correct support to ensure that they thrive. The programme is designed to develop the skills needed for higher education, such as academic writing, referencing, research and critical thinking skills. This programme is being expanded on the back of the pandemic with outreach to major employers who may have been forced into making redundancies.

Staffordshire University is committed to widening opportunity across the board - from its work in schools through to its programmes to support mature learners back into education.

Ensuring that everyone, no matter where they are from or at what stage of life they are at, has equal opportunity is at the heart of the University’s social mobility ethos.

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“ relationship with Our the city is as strong as it’s ever been Fit for Purpose: How important is the role of universities in tackling the levelling up agenda?

AS PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF SOUTHAMPTON, PROFESSOR MARK E. SMITH OVERSEES AN INSTITUTION WHICH HAS GRASPED THE OPPORTUNITIES OF SUPPORTING SOCIAL MOBILIT Y WITH BOTH HANDS. HERE HE SPEAKS TO FIT FOR PURPOSE ABOUT THE UNIVERSIT Y’S IMPACT ON IT S WIDER REGION.

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Southampton has some deprived and relatively poor areas by national standards but we regard our role as levelling up the whole local region. Levelling up occurs at a number of levels, and the University of Southampton plays into it in several ways. One is by ensuring that people don’t get pigeonholed too early in their school careers and part of levelling up is helping people realise what their options are early enough.

Also, different backgrounds or different pressures on people can limit what they think they can do.

One of the things I’m proudest of is the Ignite programme, which is philanthropically funded and works with school pupils to ask questions, point out those alternatives and help them to understand and succeed. We know that people coming from non-traditional backgrounds, without more support, tend not to get the most out of their education. So, it is about continually levelling up of opportunity throughout the student journey, intervening at all times.

The Ignite programme works to level the playing field. We proactively look at how we work with people to continue to narrow the gap between the advantages and disadvantages, or to remove the disadvantage those people have.

A critical function of universities is to prepare students today for the opportunities of tomorrow. How do you do that at Southampton?

As the economy changes, the skills that the economy needs change, and it is important to keep up with that. Equally importantly is seeing the new ideas of tomorrow and then converting them into actual activity that generates economic

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return. It is something that universities need to take seriously, because that means you’re creating those jobs in your locality.

If you look at the mix of the economy over time, big monolithic companies are still important to the economy, but of the new jobs created, many of them are in very small companies which are start-ups by people coming directly out of institutions. We need to make sure we’ve got the systems in place that would enable those people to succeed, then generate the ideas, new jobs and opportunities within the local community. This has to be something that we can influence by making sure that those people are going to have the right skills. It is about creating the ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurialism that actually allows people to succeed.

How does University of Southampton work to improve mental and physical health at all ages to boost overall wellbeing to allow people to fulfil their potential?

We have something called LifeLab which is a unique, state-ofthe-art teaching laboratory dedicated to improving adolescent health by giving school students opportunities to learn about health-related issues, diet and wellbeing. Levelling up is about making people aware in enough time in their life, so they can make a difference to what their health outcomes are going to be.

The LifeLab is an important example of something aimed directly at school children that isn’t saying you should do this, and you should do that - it’s about explaining what their life choices mean in terms of what’s going to happen later.

Levelling up is about helping those people to make the right choices; knowing what choices you have available to you early enough so that you make them and understand them as best you can. Saying ‘this is the information, and these are the likely consequences so you can make a choice’ and trusting children along with their parents to make them at an earlier stage is important.

How important do you consider collaboration to be within Southampton towards your goal of levelling up?

A lot of the work in schools we do is directly with the Southampton City Council’s Education Department. Being able to understand where they’re coming from, what they need from us, and that they understand what our goals are, is very important.

We have Southampton Connect, which is where the major civic leaders get together – the universities, the council, the Chamber of Commerce, the voluntary sector and the emergency services.

It’s a forum for exchanging what the key issues are. It helps to understand how we work together as partners, and how we can work together to have the best Southampton. Having a forum like that is incredibly useful, and I find it is a very good way of getting a feel for where we as an institution need to be and also what the pressures are. The relationship between the city and its universities, and particularly my university, is the strongest it’s ever been.

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New report highlights action needed to tackle social mobility across the country A NEW REPORT L AUNCHED BY THE UNIVERSIT Y OF YORK HAS WARNED THAT MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE T O A D D R E S S S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y A C R O S S T H E C O U N T R Y, WITH A PLEA TO “TURN THE LESSONS OF THE PANDEMIC INT O A POWERFUL AGENT F OR CHANGE.” The stark warning forms part of a major new report published by the University of York and Justine Greening’s Purpose Coalition, which aims to highlight key actions required to reduce inequality on a local, national and global scale.

The Purpose Coalition was formed by the former Government Minister Justine Greening to help address social mobility in the UK, while the University of York has reaffirmed its commitment to social justice and a University for Public Good in its new Strategy.

York was the first Russell Group University to sign the Social Mobility Pledge and today’s report furthers the University’s ambition to help make York the UK’s first inclusive learning city through our work with Higher York.

The authors of the hard-hitting report say we need to turn the lessons of the pandemic into a powerful agent for change: informing and shaping the policies behind the levelling up agenda and building back better to create a fairer, more socially mobile society that is diverse, sustainable and inclusive.

The report highlights 16 towns and cities in England at risk of being left further behind because of the pandemic, with a warning that more needs to be done to address social mobility across the country.

The areas identified at risk of a “double opportunity hit” are

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already among the worst areas for social mobility in England and these areas are going to be particularly badly impacted by coronavirus, the report warns.

The “coldspots” are clustered in the midlands, but also include Norwich, East Cambridgeshire and Crawley in the South East.

The report warns that this “opportunity deficit” overwhelmingly affects people from more disadvantaged communities and backgrounds, with inequalities opening up at the earliest stage and continuing throughout the formative years.

This is closing down social mobility and opening up the serious risk of creating a lost generation, the report warns.

The report outlines how more needs to be done to tackle social inequality through the 14 ‘Levelling Up Goals’ that track social mobility through key life stages, from early years through to adulthood and older age. The goals will provide a benchmark to track progress, the authors of the report say.

Leading figures from business, local government and charities will attend a round-table event on 22 November to launch the report and discuss the challenges and potential solutions to facilitating and implementing the levelling up goals.

The ambitious manifesto outlined in the report demonstrates a continued commitment to social justice and aligns with the University’s vision to help York build back better as we emerge from the pandemic.

The report highlights some of the work that has already been done to address social mobility, including the University’s support for care leavers, our commitment to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), our Black Access Programme and the success of York Festival of Ideas to drive partnership and cultural and social engagement across the City and beyond thanks to an online version of the festival.

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Professor Kiran Trehan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Partnerships and Engagement, said: “Our partnership with Justine Greening and the Purpose Coalition signals the University of York’s determination to lead the national levelling up agenda, shaping it in such a way that the UK not only builds back better, but also builds back fairer.

“We do this by reconnecting with our founding ethos, which is rooted in a tradition of social reform, epitomised by the Rowntree family, that remains as relevant and urgent today as it was a century ago when it helped shape the formation of the welfare state.

“Our shared goal, with the Purpose Coalition, is no less ambitious.

It is to make the University, the city and the wider region a powerful catalyst for unlocking social mobility, not just in York or the UK but much further afield.”

The University of York’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Charlie Jeffery added: “Our partnership with the Purpose Coalition will act as a catalyst for change within our own organisation.

“York’s strategic vision is a return to the values of our founders – who endowed the new University with a strong sense of social purpose, drawing on a rich tradition of fighting for social justice and combating inequality that is distinctive to the city of York.”

Justine Greening added: “Disadvantage accumulates and we need to reverse these negative life cycles that still exist in too many parts of the country.

“That reverse starts with education and universities are in a unique position to lead the way in meeting this challenge head on, redefining the social contract they have with their local communities.”

Keighley and Ilkley MP, Robbie Moore, said: “We know that talent is spread evenly across our country, but opportunity isn’t. As we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing regional and local inequalities will be vital to building back better and levelling up our whole country.

“For me, levelling-up is not simply about moving jobs and investment from London to other major cities, but rebalancing our economy so that people in every part of the country have access to good education and opportunities. As Parliamentary Co-Chair of the Levelling Up Goals, I am delighted to see the University of York leading on this work.”

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The heart of the food manufacturing sector THE UNIVERSIT Y OF LINCOLN’S NCFM CAMPUS IS EQUIPPING YOUNG PEOPLE OF ALL BACKGROUNDS WITH OPPORTUNITIES FOR CAREERS IN A K E Y I N D U S T R Y, A S W E D I S C O V E R TA L K I N G T O P RO F E S S O R VA L B R AY B RO O K S .

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Food manufacturing is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK by turnover, larger than the aerospace and automotive sectors combined, and rural South Lincolnshire is where the heart of the sector is located. Greater Lincolnshire’s economy is underpinned by Agri-food, accounting for 24 per cent of GVA but at the sector’s core in the South Holland district, it accounts for 46 per cent of employment, compared to 4 per cent nationally.

Inevitably, the area’s infrastructure has evolved to support the sector and food logistics, specialist engineering, technical packaging specialists and other types of food supply chain businesses dominate the economic landscape, driving demand for a highly skilled local workforce.

At the heart of this business cluster, in Holbeach, sits the University of Lincoln’s satellite campus, the National Centre for Food Manufacturing (NCFM). Officially opened in 2008, it has grown to become a nationally important sector resource which is central to the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s (GLLEP) sector growth plans predicated on the development of the South Lincolnshire Food Enterprise Zone (FEZ) in Holbeach.

The NCFM combines part-time study with advanced research and innovation and it’s new £7 million Centre of Excellence is located at the FEZ where a £2.4 million Food Manufacturing Digital Technologies Centre will open soon as part of the Lincolnshire

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Putting South Lincolnshire on the map in this way is changing the local skills and cultural landscape and providing unpreceded opportunities for both young people and adults.

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Institute of Technology (IoT). The Lincolnshire IoT is a unique collaboration between the University of Lincoln, employers and Colleges across Greater Lincolnshire, which has enjoyed £13 million investment to create state-of-the-art facilities to meet the higherlevel technical and digital skills needs of Lincolnshire’s employers and provide young people with the digital skills they need to carve out a great career locally.

Greater Lincolnshire LEP is keen to attract inward investment from international investors on the FEZ which has been aided by the NCFM’s growing international reputation for both its Agri-food sector research and educational provision.

“The GLLEP’s ambition for Greater Lincolnshire’s Agri-food sector for UK Food Valley status is driving local and international investment at pace and NCFM has helped to fuel this growing standing. Putting South Lincolnshire on the map in this way is changing the local skills and cultural landscape and providing unpreceded opportunities for both young people and adults in our local communities’’ says Val Braybrooks, Dean of the Holbeach Campus.

She adds: “While the current and future opportunities are immense and much needed, there is a mismatch of skills and levels of confidence and ambition between what employers need and those held by many within our local communities. We are based in a rural area with very low levels of higher education participation and where wide-scale opportunity has historically been circumscribed by selective education which has traditionally been very strong in the area. In South Holland, only 29 per cent of the population is qualified to Level 4, against 40 per cent nationally and higher education levels for 25 to 39-year-olds in Holbeach stands at 15 per cent, compared to 48 per cent nationally. High quality, technical and science-based career opportunities abound but many young people and parents are unaware of the exciting

career opportunities on their doorstep, as the industry struggles to shake-off a commonly held but misinformed perception that it is a low-skilled industry”.

She explains: “Yes, low-skilled roles do exist, but we are seeing an unprecedented level of investment to automate laborious tasks.

Technological transformation is moving at a blistering pace and generating more, high skilled roles but there are already significant skills gaps. Across Lincolnshire there are 170,000 jobs that are needed to be filled within the next 10 years and that does not account for the loss of the EU workforce and new opportunities created through growth. Most employers see securing the skills pipeline as the biggest challenge faced and it threatens the sustainability of the sector here if it is not addressed, so it is an imperative that we help.’’

NCFM does that through its part-time apprenticeships and distance-learning provision to provide flexible study for those working across a range of roles and business types.

Braybrooks says: “We have worked with employers over the years to develop a skills offer to meet their needs and we continue to do so as requirements change. With both further education and as higher education provision, we provide seamless progression through apprenticeships for the sector’s key occupations.

“Our suite of apprenticeships extends from Level 2 through to Level 7 for key occupations like a food engineer, food scientist, food technology so learners can get a step on the ladder at any stage. Basic skills support helps learners for whom English is not their first language access provision. The Agri-food industry has a high proportion of foreign national employees so it’s an important service.’’

NCFM works in partnership with 250 UK food businesses on skills development and delivers apprenticeships with many leading food businesses, partnering with Bakkavor, OAL Nestle, Princes, Worldwide Fruit and many other leading businesses.

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The NCFM has specialist technical facilities including a dedicated food factory with full-scale and pilot plant, food chemistry and microbiology laboratories, test kitchen, sensory suite to support its research and teaching. Through its research and innovation, it is helping to address the growing demand for digital innovation and technology adoption across the food supply chain as businesses take on the challenge of striving for a net-zero carbon food chain.

“These changes will impact on the industry for decades to come and cannot be delivered without investment in science, technology and skills. As an IoT our role is to ensure that teaching is informed by the latest thinking and with several experts on the team, the NCFM is very well positioned to help the Agri-food Sector achieve its sustainability goals.

“Our research and skills are intrinsically linked, and our apprentices benefit from the full-scale, state-of-the art equipment and from the knowledge our teaching team gain as a result of our industry partnered innovation projects. I like to think of our apprentices as ‘innovation ambassadors’ rushing back to their sponsoring businesses with new ideas and confidence to instil change as of their result of research engagement at NCFM.” A number of our innovation projects are with small businesses which is important, says Braybrooks as the sector is comprised of 97 per cent SMEs. Ensuring that SMEs proposer is fundamental to creating opportunities for young people in rural

communities and explains why the University has invested in and is a strategic partner in the South Lincolnshire Food Enterprise Zone with its focus on attracting and growing fledgling, entrepreneurial businesses.

She adds: “Clearly the University wants young people and the local community to benefit from these investments and we have worked strategically since 2011 to level up the educational playing field in South Lincolnshire through the University of Lincoln’s Academy Trust. The University sponsors 5 academies in South Lincolnshire and is responsible for the education of over 2400 young people in the area and is committed to ensuring that its academies deliver a rich, relevant curriculum for its students that is both informed and supported by local employers, so that young people understand the opportunities available to them on the door-step and have the skills and confidence required by employers. NCFM works closely with our academies to help them forge links to the sector and major food businesses Bakkavor and Sainbury’s are represented on the Trust for this purpose.

“The launch of the University Academy has transformed educational provision here in South Lincolnshire. There are outstanding practices and all young people can access a really good education, regardless of selection. The balancing of the education ecosystem is great for the individuals, but it’s great for the businesses as well.’’

Braybrooks concludes: “As I look around the sector, I am delighted to see many of NCFM’s former students from South Lincolnshire in key roles within and sometimes at the helm of major businesses.

The aspiration is that we will see the pipeline of local young talent transformed from a steady flow into a gushing channel from where several hundred young people a year are delivered into high quality career opportunities, accessing higher level learning through degree apprenticeships and other technical learning opportunities with local employers.”

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Elizabeth Takyi UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH Elizabeth Takyi is the CEO and Founder of Wandsworth-based A2i Dyslexia CIC, a social enterprise that aims to raise awareness of Dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties within the local community.

“The journey of setting up A2i Dyslexia has been phenomenal, both highs and lows. I have had challenges as a Dyslexic, trying to run an organisation and it has not been an easy journey.

However, supporting the Dyslexic community to unlock their full potential and knowing that we are there to support them makes the journey worthwhile.”

Elizabeth completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Education in 2015. The experience has had an immeasurable impact, thanks in particular to the support of the lecturers.

“Studying at Greenwich was a real-life experience in how teachers should be thorough in teaching and supporting students… it opened so many different doors in teaching for me.”

“My biggest inspiration, however, was my course leader, Tracy Partridge, (Senior Lecturer, PGCE Lifelong Learning post-16), who made me believe in myself and inspired me to reach my full potential despite my Dyslexia and specific learning difficulties.”

It is thanks to the support of the university that Elizabeth is able to champion the cause of Dyslexia awareness and encourages others to take advantage of the support networks available at Greenwich.

“As a dyslexic, I found the support I received from Student Services beneficial while my one2one support at the university was phenomenal. If anyone has any specific learning difficulties i.e. Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia Irlen Syndrome, I advise them to ask for help. I would especially encourage BAME students to access the support available at Greenwich to unlock their full potential. I am a true testament of the amazing support the University of Greenwich is able to provide.”

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The role of leaders in achieving equality, through diversity & inclusion THE UNIVERSIT Y OF BRADFORD’S VISION IS A WORLD OF INCLUSION AND EQUALIT Y OF OPPORTUNIT Y WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO, AND C AN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE. WE WANT TO BE KNOWN AS THE PL ACE TO BE ABLE TO MAKE THAT DIFFERENCE. Whilst we have made a demonstrable impact on social inclusion as evidenced by being named University of the Year for Social Inclusion 2021 and ranked 1st on the England Social Mobility Index there is still much to do to achieve our vision.

This piece focuses on levelling up goal 14 “Achieve equality, through diversity & inclusion”. It draws upon the University of Bradford’s long-standing experience and impact in creating more opportunities for those from disadvantaged backgrounds to engage in higher education and progress to professional managerial jobs.

One of the hallmarks of our impact is the adoption of an approach to equality, diversity and inclusion that focuses on structural inequalities. A focus on structural inequalities centres on putting in place institutional strategies and delivery plans that deliver whole system, intersectional solutions that drive long-term impacts and foster diversity maturity across the university and our partners.

It takes many years for diversity maturity to become part of the fabric of an organisation and for diversity and inclusion to endure despite changes in leadership and external priorities and policies. It is vital that the focus is strong and maintained

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to avoid its priority ebbing and flowing with competing demands and changes in leadership.

To make an impact on the significant structural inequalities across and within countries requires several organisational foundations to be in place including: • Strong value led leadership that understands structural inequalities, accept they exist in their organisation and are committed to addressing them.

• A whole system connected approach to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

• Acceptance which acknowledges that long standing, complex structural inequality is challenging and requires long term commitment and investment.

• A framework that seeks to tackle the structural issues that create inequalities, rather than focusing efforts on individual adjustments which enable inequalities to persist.

• An organisational strategy centred on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion with KPIs relevant to ambition and place.

• Appropriate level of resource to support delivery of strategic delivery plan and systemic evidence generation to support appropriate change programmes.

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Whilst these six foundations are important, they are not easy to establish if the organisation does not understand why they are required in the first instance. In other words, the problem of structural inequality must be broadly understood and accepted across the organisation.

In this regard the effective leadership at governing body and executive level is a pre-requisite to developing an inclusive organisation. Bourke & Titus (2020) highlight that inclusive leadership is emerging as a unique and critical capability identifying six inclusive leadership traits: visible commitment, humility, awareness of bias, curiosity about others, cultural intelligence, and effective collaboration. Inclusive leadership must be a key characteristic of leadership teams at every level of the organisation.

Unfortunately, there is some distance to travel to achieve such inclusive leadership approaches within the higher education sector. One key barrier is the lack of diversity in senior positions in higher education and business reflecting a propensity to appoint leaders who fail to acknowledge that long standing and engrained structural inequalities exit and must be addressed. Leaders that may acknowledge these issues often do not have the skills to bring about long-term integrated change programmes that will address all forms of exclusion.

Developing and more importantly implementing inclusive leadership practices at the University of Bradford has involved positioning diversity and inclusion at the centre of the University Strategy and values. Inclusion is one of the University’s four values.

This in turn means we believe diversity is a source of strength

and must be understood, valued, supported, and leveraged. This strategic positioning will enhance our ability to enable a climate of inclusion that can be embedded and sustained, and of course we will ensure we are held to account for our impact by our governing body, staff, and students.

It is only through enabling a climate for inclusion that it is possible to make all staff feel they belong and therefore make our diversity count. The first step for leadership teams in creating this climate is to spend time in supported reflection and personal development engaging in challenging conversations regarding their perceptions, experiences, and beliefs. Reflecting on our personal identities and learning from our staff and students from all backgrounds supports senior leaders to understand what it means to belong and more importantly what it means to be excluded. The senior leaders of the University have been involved in this process through a well-established programme of learning partnerships (Archibong & Burford 2006). These learning partnerships are a key part of our personal and professional development. In embedding this approach across the institution, I am confident that it will develop and sustain our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion maturity.

I am committed to supporting the University of Bradford to lead the movement to call for accountability for social justice and systematic transformation to combat all forms of discrimination.

We must not compromise our resolve to do everything we can to remove systemic inequalities of all forms.

By Professor Shirley Congdon, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Bradford

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The importance of community HAVING CLOSE LINKS WITH THE COMMUNIT Y IS A B S O L U T E LY V I T A L F O R T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F B O L T O N , AS WE REPORT HERE. According to The Times & The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020, the University of Bolton is one of the most socially inclusive universities in the country.

Pro Vice-Chancellor Baroness Helen Newlove is proud of that accolade and is a passionate champion of the university’s role

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in promoting social mobility. She points out that the 6,000 students are largely local with 70 per cent being drawn from Bolton and the wider North West region.

She says: “The community is very important to the University and it’s so important that we have good links within the community. We are very much student focused, on giving them the best experience and quality teaching, and that is why, for student satisfaction we are number one in the Greater Manchester region.

“Some of our students have never been out of Manchester or Bolton so we want to ensure that their journey through the

Baroness Newlove says: “We work closely with them, especially during the pandemic, because we work with families who have still got to go to work and who have children who may be only able to get a meal from the Bolton Lads and Girls Club. It’s also very important that we look at other initiatives, so we do the maths club with state schools to raise attainment at GCSE level.

We are also interested in the Duke of Edinburgh Award and we host the Children’s University Graduation ceremony. We are really keen on covenants, we have signed up to the Military Covenant and to the Care Leavers Covenant.”

The University also works in close collaboration with employers.

It has introduced degree level Apprenticeships, for which it has 500 students signed up this year.

Mentoring plays a key part in the university’s engagement with its students. It has a team of BAME ambassadors who can work in their own communities to spread awareness of what the university has to offer.

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university is the least stressful possible. We have a responsibility to our students in their learning opportunities to help them to succeed.”

She adds: “Inclusivity and social mobility are always at the forefront of our minds because we have ethnic communities with various cultures within Bolton and we must always be aware and considerate of that. It’s so important to open these communities to social mobility and inform the families of just what this university is capable of doing.”

She cites one practical measure: the university’s provision of 1000 bikes to the students free of charge instead of using public transport. And providing subsidised hot healthy meals for £1 food service and £1 take away meals from a Bolton restaurant, with all money being donated to a local charity.

The University has also worked to serve students from military families, ex-service personnel and those with experience of having been in care.

The Covid pandemic has presented both challenges and opportunities for The University of Bolton.

“The pandemic has caused issues, obviously,” says Baroness Newlove, “but Zoom has helped us to engage and we have had to look at how we can work creatively.”

She adds: “Obviously the pressure has been on our staff and tutors who are trying to do the best for their students. I took part in a lot of the student forums via Zoom and for me, personally, during the pandemic it opened a window for me to engage with more students. So, while it has been a horrific virus that we have still got today, it has enabled me to have more time to speak to students and work with colleagues, to look at the mentoring, at the careers hub and looking at trying to create some different programmes that are fit for purpose.”

She also believes that Covid 19 has vindicated the hard work the University has done in forging partnerships and in working in collaboration with other organisations.

“It’s important that we keep the discussions open”, she says.

“The pandemic has had its challenges, of course it has, but I do think it has brought us time to sit and think and to get to know people better.”

It works particularly closely with Bolton Lads and Girls Club, a 128-year old Youth Club and charity, which provides young people with a safe-haven to spend their free time. The club engages with more than 3,000 children and young people each year in its four centres, through centre-based play and youth work, sport provision, arts and music programmes, dance, drama, multi-media, outreach and detached streetbased programmes.

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The pandemic has had its challenges but I do think it has brought us time to sit and think and to get to know people better.

She says: “I do think we need to talk to families of potential students for them to fully understand the university journey, otherwise they don’t ask the right questions. We need to give them the tools to be ready to answer when questioned by their children.”

It’s a learning process for the students, for the University and for Baroness Newlove.

She says: “I still see this as a journey of education because I’m learning lots from people in different walks of life, different aspects of education, in turn this will enable me to bring issues or questions back to the House of Lords.”

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SPOTLIGHT ON PROFESSOR GRAEME ATHERTON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST LONDON

A Centre for Levelling Up UNDERSTANDING WHAT LEVELLING UP MEANS AND HAVING THE EVIDENCE BASE IN PL ACE TO PRODUCE EFFECTIVE POLICY IS CRUCIAL, WHICH IS WHY THE UNIVERSIT Y OF WEST LONDON H A S S E T U P T H E ‘ C E N T R E F O R L E V E L L I N G U P ’, A S W E R E P O R T H E R E .

Achieving levelling up depends very much on how we define it.

The University of West London (UWL) has set up the ‘Centre for Levelling Up’ (CELUP) to produce the evidence base for policy around levelling up. The new centre, or CELUP, will explore what the different dimensions of inequality which underpin the levelling up agenda are and in particular the role of place in this.

It is a particularly appropriate goal for UWL to launch a centre like this. Around 55 per cent of full time undergraduates come from the lowest two deprivation quintiles as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation, over 50 per cent of students are mature and over 60 per cent are from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. As a university it is rooted in its local community with many of the arts, cultural and sporting facilities of the university open to those who live and work in west London as well as UWL students. CELUP fits clearly with the mission of UWL, which is vital for it to be effective.

The work of UWL and the students it supports, many of which come from London, also emphasises that levelling up is a national and not a regional issue. It appears the case, certainly where some policymakers are concerned, that levelling up means addressing the problems associated with inequality in

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only certain parts of the country. The experiences of UWL and the students it serves shows that inequality affects people not places and across the country there are those who need greater support and opportunities to progress in their lives. In London for example, there are over 700,000 children living in poverty.

This focus on people as well as places will be at the heart of the work of CELUP. Improving the physical makeup of different places is important. The changes in the retail sector accelerated by the pandemic and the problems town centres are facing with empty spaces need to be addressed. The experience of UWL and how it is using its estate for the common good shows some possible ways forward here – other universities are also showing their civic commitments by opening more facilities in town centres. But as important as this kind of regeneration is, resources need to be focused on those who are bearing the brunt of inequality.

The first major project that CELUP has undertaken encapsulates this approach. The Learning about Place report, to be launched in July 2021, looks at what educational opportunity means in 8 areas of the UK which the data shows have borne the brunt of many of the social and economic changes of the last 40 years

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The final overriding message of the report was that each place had its own individual combination of challenges and also strengths.

including Blackpool, Stoke, Derby and Wrexham. Through a series of discussions with those working in education, from school to university level, in these areas it explores the opportunities available from secondary level to adult; the gaps in educational provision that exist; the idea of social mobility and the impact of Covid on learning. The report shows that these places, many of which are continually labelled educational failures by those from outside, are multi-dimensional. While some of those who live in those areas face huge educational barriers, they also contain people and initiatives which are enabling progress for others.

Addressing these barriers requires a ‘people focused’ approach to levelling up where resources and responsibility are devolved to local communities and providers. It is also important to think carefully about the language used to capture opportunity and progress. There is a real lack of fit between the idea of social mobility and the everyday aspirations of those in the 8 areas who were part of the research. For many, social mobility means leaving what you value – be that community or culture. It is opportunities located within these areas that many people want, alongside for some a broader, less rigid idea of progress. Social mobility implies that success is solely attached to significant

economic progress whilst for those we consulted it can mean more than that.

The final overriding message of the report was that each place had its own individual combination of challenges and also strengths.

If we are to achieve any form of levelling up nuanced approaches that are based on what those living in specific places from different groups see as the objectives of policy interventions will be needed.

There are a range of ways that universities can contribute to the levelling up effort. Admitting students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education, opening up facilities to the wider community and locating in places that are being deserted. UWL is active in all these ways but universities can, and should as creators of knowledge, contribute to the understanding of levelling up.

They should use their position to act as voices for those whom levelling up is aimed at and contribute to the development of evidence based policy. The Centre for Levelling Up aspires to do this - collaborating with those across the private, public and civic sectors to do so. If we are to significantly improve the outcomes of those who for so long have been denied the opportunity to realise their ambitions for a better life then nothing short of this kind of collaboration will be required.

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F WO R C E S T E R

A commitment to educational opportunity and equality T H RO U G H O U T T H E 21 S T C E N T U R Y, T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F W O RC E S T E R H A S S U C C E S S F U L LY C A M PA I G N E D T O T U R N N O TA B LY S T RO N G C O M M I T M E N T T O E Q U A L I T Y, INCLUSION AND HIGH EDUC ATIONAL STANDARDS, INTO SUSTAINED, SUCCESSFUL CHANGE. This has been achieved through a highly innovative, ‘whole university’ approach to inclusion and community engagement, which has been applied locally, nationally and internationally.

Driven by a deep-seated commitment to educational opportunity and equality, and developed in successive Strategic Plans, it is an approach which is designed to ensure that every activity and

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facility of the University promotes inclusion and participation, whilst simultaneously contributing to educational excellence. This maximises student and graduate success, embedding a culture that values every individual and the generation of knowledge that can be put to work in society, and setting a new model for inclusion and social mobility in UK higher education.

From the ambitious ‘inclusive by design’ development of the University’s curriculum and estate, to the introduction of extensive mental health and wellbeing support and beyond, the University of Worcester stands out as a driver of innovative, positive change.

In 2020 the University won the inaugural Times Higher Education Award for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. It is the University’s combination of inclusion and excellence which has made it the only UK university to be shortlisted three times in the last five

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years for Times Higher Education University of the Year.

Testaments to excellence include the Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings, in which the University has, in all three years of the rankings, been named in the UK’s top three for Quality Education, a measure based on the UN Sustainability Development Goal to ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’.

The University has long advocated – and shown leadership in its commitment to – the principle that all those who have the ability and commitment to study in higher education should have the opportunity to do so. Consistently, a minimum of 97 per cent of the University’s students have been state educated, significantly higher than the national average.

This commitment applies not only to those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, but to those whose physical or mental circumstances brings challenges. In 2004, the University was one of the first universities to appoint specialist Mental Health Advisors, who now work alongside the University’s BACP (British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy) - accredited Counselling Service. It is now one of only a small number of universities with an identified suicide prevention strategy, bringing together the perspectives and expertise of staff from across the University, as well as external partners including the local authority, NHS, Samaritans and Community First.

Delivering on its mission to support engagement, the University has created some of the Country’s most inspiring and inclusive facilities, including the UK’s first indoor sports arena purposedesigned to include the wheelchair athlete, as well as Europe’s first fully integrated university and public library, The Hive, providing library, learning and community facilities to all in a convenient city centre location. The University is now working towards the development of an international inclusive cricket and education centre, as part of its Severn Campus, which over the next five years will include new facilities for medicine, health and wellbeing.

In 2019 the then Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore MP, singled out the University as an exemplar of best practice, commenting that: “I want institutions like these to no longer be the exception, but the norm.”

The University’s inclusive approach has a profound and farreaching impact on the lives of many, while reshaping and redefining the modern university. Each year the University educates hundreds of first-class teachers, early years professionals, nurses, midwives and paramedics, vocational professions that are major channels of social mobility.

The University’s poorly connected, rural location limits links

to the major industrial and professional service firms who are the Country’s leading graduate employers. Yet the University continues to create outstanding opportunities for its students to develop skills and experience that help them realise their career aspirations. As a result, it is in the top 10 English HEIs for employment one, three and five years after graduation, a performance which has been consistent through all the years in which HM Government has published its Longitudinal Educational Outcomes survey.

The University of Worcester has demonstrated that through innovation and collaboration, universities can play a key role in breaking down barriers to higher level learning and better opportunities in life without diminishing their dedication to excellent academic standards. The University’s achievements all stem from many years of imaginative strategy combined with persistent, dynamic, but patient, work to create an inclusive socially engaged culture.

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SPOTLIGHT ON PROFESSOR KAREN BRYAN AND YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSITY

Overcoming barriers to higher education SOCIAL JUSTICE RUNS THROUGH EVERY THING THAT YORK ST JOHN UNIVERSIT Y DOES, AS WE REPORT HERE. York St John University was founded in 1841 to widen access to careers in education, and social mobility has been in its DNA ever since. Today York St John University improves social mobility by encouraging and enabling participation from groups that are under-represented in higher education.

The University’s approach to admissions tries to reduce the complex barriers that exist to participation in higher education.

York St John does a lot of work, often in partnership with other institutions, to overcome these barriers. Among school children there is often the need to raise aspirations and confidence, with many concluding, far too early in their education, that university isn’t for people like them. That’s why it is important to find ways for younger children to visit universities to show that they are open and friendly institutions.

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York St John runs a contextualised admissions scheme which considers an applicant’s background and circumstances, as well as their grades. When York St John receives an application via UCAS, the University considers where an applicant lives (indices of multiple deprivation from that area), the performance of the school they attended (results can be up to three grades lower in a struggling school), whether the applicant is mature (over 21), has spent time in care, is the first in their family to attend university or if they declare a disability.

York St John has access to a lot of information about the applicant and uses this to make an offer and reduce the academical requirements if appropriate. The scheme has been running for two years and has had a very positive impact with numbers increasing from groups such as care leavers, first in family, areas of deprivation and those with disabilities. Although entrance requirements are in some cases lowered this has not had an impact on academic performance.

This approach has been especially successful with mature students, and a separate scheme has been running for two years

out of university open days. Much of the work that the University does is promoting the wider benefits of higher education, as well as discussing whether York St John could be the right place for an individual student.

York St John is also part of a number of joint outreach initiatives to widen participation and address the issue of a lack of social mobility. The University is a member of the North Yorkshire Coast Higher Education Collaboration, working in particular with pupils from year 7 onwards who live along the North Yorkshire coast where it is known that aspiration can be low and other factors are in play which limit social mobility, such as poor internet access. The project, which is in collaboration with the University of Hull and the University of York, includes specific interventions to encourage confidence and raise aspirations among students. As part of the collaboration, activities with pupils and parents include campus visits, family engagement and subject tasters, with activity tailored to the specific needs of schools and pupils.

York St John is also involved with the Roots to Success programme which aims to engage with local primary and secondary schools in York over an extended period of time to raise aspirations about higher education. The scheme, which has been in place since 1998, is a collaboration between York St John, University of York, York College and Askham Bryan. The University is also part of another collaboration, the On Track programme, which works with care experienced young people from York and North Yorkshire.

As with all universities, York St John’s outreach activity has been impacted significantly by the coronavirus pandemic. However, the University has been working hard to adapt its outreach programme, making as much content as possible available online and working in collaboration with schools to ensure that all the necessary information is available to students.

One of the big challenges that has arisen from coronavirus is that during the recruitment cycle for September 2021, it has been impossible for prospective students to visit the university. Open days have been largely online, which can make it extremely difficult for students to make their university choices. Since the easing of lockdown measures, York St John has offered campus tours conducted by student ambassadors for individual families to give candidates the best possible sense of the University before making their choices. Moving forward, the plan is to run smaller, covid-safe, in-person open days from the summer.

York St John University is in the process of refreshing its 2026 strategy with the aim of expanding opportunities for students.

The University continues to have a key role to play as an anchor institution making an important contribution to society and York St John remains firmly committed to social justice.

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to support that group of applicants. The University is also launching an additional scheme for those transitioning from the military and is constantly looking at ways to assist candidates as much as possible.

Support for students from under-represented backgrounds does not stop with the application process. While no assumptions are made about what students will need, extra financial, wellbeing and academic skills support is available if necessary. York St John aims to take a personalised approach and students can refer themselves for support or access via a member of the teaching staff.

Certain students who come through the contextualised admission scheme are given a scholarship of £800 a year, anticipating that finances could become an issue. Students also become part of the York St John Scholars community and have the option to access help and guidance through that channel. Additional support is also available if a student would like to study abroad or take an internship.

York St John University has a varied outreach programme to raise awareness of higher education and its benefits. The University recruits around 60 per cent of its students from the Yorkshire and Humber region, with the North East and the North West of England also being major recruitment areas. The University attracts students from the rest of the UK, the EU and all over the world.

York St John has a network of partner schools where it works to raise awareness of the higher education options available and help 6th formers with UCAS forms and advice on how to get the best

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A L D E R M O R E BA N K

A disruptive influence THE CHALLENGER BANK, ALDERMORE, SERVES AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA, PROVIDING SMES WITH THE FINANCIAL SERVICES THEY NEED TO GROW AND CREATE OPPORTUNITIES. IT IS ALSO HELPING TO OPEN UP ACCESS TO SAVINGS AND CREDIT – RECOGNISED AS ONE OF T H E 14 L E V E L L I N G U P G O A L S . R T H O N J U S T I N E GREENING SPOKE TO CHIEF EXECUTIVE STEVEN C O O P E R A B O U T I T S A P P RO A C H T O S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y, TALENT AND PURPOSE.

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Fit for Purpose: In a nutshell, how would you describe Aldermore’s role in levelling up?

One of the things that attracted me to the company was its stated purpose, which is ‘backing people to fulfil life’s hopes and dreams’. What we do every single day is help people who often have an impaired credit rating. This doesn’t mean people who are habitually bad, or choosing not to pay their bills. It is people that may have had some kind of life event, or lack of opportunity or a knock. Maybe they’ve lost their job, or they’ve been through a separation or an illness. As a result, they have an impaired credit rating.

Our job is to help them get back on track. We help many people in that situation get a home, often for the first time, and we see through the first two or three years that they have a mortgage with us, that their credit rating improves materially. We look beyond a credit score, beyond the ‘computer says no’ mentality.

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Backing people to fulfil life’s hopes and dreams.

Our job is to help people. Similarly with businesses, I saw one in the North of England recently that we’ve helped to expand, investing in premises for new ventures. As a result of that, 150 new jobs will be created. That’s our role in levelling up, we want to challenge the status quo in the banking environment, and we want to help people.

Being a company with a really strong sense of purpose must help you to attract and keep the best talent?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised [since becoming chief executive] that the stated purpose, the clarity of the purpose, and the fact that we can add impact, makes such a difference to [our] people. We undoubtedly attract better quality talent and retain better quality talent as a result.

While we lack the scale of a big High Street bank, we have much more agility and nimbleness. People want us to succeed, we are wanted by communities, and I’m not sure some of our competitors can say that. My intention is to amplify that. This is why we are keen on helping people to save [and] enable them to make different, more informed, choices going forward.

In terms of continuing to deliver your purpose during the pandemic, did you see more demand for support from customers struggling to make ends meet?

In the first two or three weeks of lockdown, we had 15,000 customers ask for a payment holiday. Meanwhile, we had colleagues grappling with COVID in their own lives, and maybe home-schooling, maybe sick and operating remotely for the first time. We found our way through it. By the way, of the 15,000 homeowners who requested a payment holiday, 90 per cent are now back on track. We also helped people buy houses through that period too.

Now we’re doing really high numbers in helping people

get more affordable mortgages, and helping businesses to recover, thrive and grow.

You work extensively with SMEs and start-ups. Did you notice a heightened sense of entrepreneurial spirit in the face of adversity during the pandemic?

There are a number of businesses that didn’t survive the pandemic, and you can put all sorts of reasons behind that. Maybe it wasn’t a viable business in the first place.

Maybe the business owner wasn’t taking tough, decisive action quick enough and so on. But during that early period of the pandemic, you also saw some great examples of entrepreneurship, where they thought through how their business could survive or change and prosper, looking after its colleagues and supply chain.

They were keeping supply chains going, changing business models and thinking about, maybe, enabling furloughed staff to support the NHS. What those people have bought back into the workplace are different perspectives and skills. It’s been tremendous to then apply that in different ways. We’re also seeing some people taking stock or their lives. In some cases, they’re moving out of salaried employment, and are taking forward a business that they actually started in lockdown.

We’re seeing some interesting behavioural change there. I think a lot of people have realised they don’t really want to be doing what they were doing before. They want more flexibility and purpose, they want to enjoy life more, and help others.

I’ve been inspired by some of the things that I’ve seen. It’s amazing how some businesses have toughed it out, often with great support packages, and on the whole banks have been pretty supportive too. I do think the pandemic has created a much stronger sense of resilience and entrepreneurship in the UK and I think that will be good for us in the months and years ahead.

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Level up finance to level up the country ACCESS TO SAVINGS AND CREDIT IS A KEY ENABLER OF SOCIAL MOBILIT Y - THAT’S WHY IT’S THE FOCUS O F L E V E L L I N G U P G O A L 7.

Levelling up means that everyone has an equal opportunity to improve their lives. However, for many, we have to recognise that taking advantage of that opportunity, even with the necessary skills or knowledge, also requires financial resources. That can be affording the transport to get to an interview, buying the suit or car that a new role demands, or finding the capital to help get a business idea off the ground. If you’re unable to access capital or, even worse, are trapped in debt then you face significant barriers to success. Whatever your ambition or ability, it can feel like you are never going to get very far.

It means that the need for impartial, well-informed financial advice is crucial at every stage of our lives. Being financially literate, and having the confidence to obtain and understand the right advice about financial products, is essential for being able to get on in life. The other side of the coin – and one which we have seen exacerbated by the pandemic – is that financial exclusion leads to

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economic hardship and stress, with a negative impact on health, relationships and work.

The statistics tell their own story. Over 11 million people have less than £100 savings to fall back on and nine million often borrow to buy food or pay for bills. 22 million say they don’t know enough to plan for their retirement. The Government has acknowledged that more needs to be done to tackle this financial exclusion and is working with regulators and the wider financial sector to make it easier for people to access the right financial services and product with the publication last year of a ten-year National Wellbeing Strategy, setting out five clear goals to support individuals throughout every stage of their financial lives.

It’s clear that those institutions that deal with and provide capital are at the heart of how we make progress on making access to finance and savings available to everyone, removing that particular barrier to people getting on in life.

Rising to the challenge are new banks which are changing the status quo. Aldermore, a multi-specialist lending bank, aims to open up access to those people and businesses who find it difficult to get finance and advice from the traditional financial sector. It has taken the issue of access to finance which is at

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the heart of Levelling Up Goal 7 and made it the business’s fundamental purpose.

Aldermore’s new CEO and former Co-Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, Steven Cooper, is steering the company to go even further. He has led Aldermore to join the Purpose Coalition, a group of the most committed purpose-led leaders in the country, which is setting new standards for reflecting true ESG priorities in business practice. The Purpose Coalition has developed the Purpose Goals architecture, known as the Levelling Up Goals in the UK, to allow organisations to articulate their purpose and measure their social impact. The 14 Goals provide a common framework around key life stages – from early years to fair recruitment and from good health and wellbeing to closing the digital divide. Aldermore is leading on Goal 7 Access to savings and credit, bringing its expertise, ambition and personal touch to help innovate and shape what levelling up really means for this issue.

Addressing the barriers to financial inclusion means looking at a range of solutions – financial education starting at school; better support from employers for their workforce’s financial wellbeing, especially those in their first jobs; better access to and

communication about financial products. As with other aspects of levelling up, a place-based approach could also be employed, sitting alongside other work being delivered at a local level and reflecting the different needs of different areas.

Working with the Purpose Coalition, it has been clear that there are some sectors – ranging from utilities to insurance and hospitality, for example - where organisations have already thought carefully about what they are doing and how they can make a significant positive social impact. The process of using the Purpose Goals architecture has caused them to take a fresh look at raising their ambition levels and led them to work much more creatively, delivering more innovative solutions with a more diverse workforce.

We are seeing different businesses take on different aspects of the levelling up challenge, focusing on those areas where they can really make a difference. Similarly, for Aldermore and the wider financial sector, this is a huge opportunity to bring that same ambition to Goal 7 on access to savings and credit, a crucial enabler of social mobility. It’s strong leadership that should be very much welcomed.

Rt Hon Justine Greening, Chair, Levelling Up Goals

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LEN DLEASE

Built to last – infrastructure investment and levelling up RT HON JUSTINE GREENING TALKS TO NEIL MARTIN, CEO (EUROPE) OF LENDLEASE, THE INTERNATIONAL REAL ESTATE AND INVESTMENT GROUP WHICH IS SHAPING CITIES AND COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE GLOBE.

Fit for Purpose: Why is levelling up important to you?

When people think about infrastructure, they think roads and rails, but we think about it as place and community. When you boil it all back down to what do we do, we are creating large scale communities. We have around 20,000 apartments in our backlog and several million square feet of offices, and we need to make sure that they work for communities, both for those that will live there and those in the surrounding areas, whether that’s opportunities, jobs and careers or a sense of community. When the government talks about levelling up and how infrastructure plays into that, this clearly sits within everything that we do.

How did the pandemic affect your work?

With large scale construction projects, the first thing was, of course, to follow Public Health England guidance around how we make those places safe for the workers through social distancing and one-way systems. And the levels of production that we could get back to were less than we anticipated. So, there was a production hit. Also, a big part of urban regeneration is [creating] living cities [that are] vibrant. But COVID made us all stay at home and not be part of those city environments. It’s important that we don’t forget that cities are very important to the economic resilience of the country. We now have an opportunity to rethink communities. It’s quite clear that flexibility is going to be a much bigger issue, whether that’s working at home or using your

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community to be more than just somewhere where you may live and go for a meal. How do you give a balance where people are able to walk to work, have more open space and flex their own accommodation should they want to work at home? How do you bring in better Wi Fi technology? All of these things have to be brought into what we create. The secret of the answer lies in just talking to the communities you’re building for. How do they see it working? What do they want? Whatever we come up with in the end has to work - and the only way you know it works is to actually involve the community in those discussions and have working groups about what that life looks like. It’s an exciting challenge.

Society has changed, and I think it won’t go back to how it was, so what an opportunity to be at the forefront of that.

So, the pandemic could be the turning point that makes cities more liveable?

Yes. There’s a phrase that’s been around for a while ‘the urban village’. This doesn’t mean village life is ideal but it does mean open space. If you’re living on the 20th floor of an apartment block, you still need open space, you still want facilities there, whether it’s a yoga studio, gym, park, restaurants and independent shops.

That sense of community is so important.

Tell us about Lendlease’s role as a creator of opportunities that enable social mobility.

We make sure, of course, that we recruit from diversity of background, gender, ethnicity and cognitive ability. We try to pull in from a wide variety [of talent] and recruit from the areas where we’re working. But the bigger piece for us really is that we employ so many [through] our supply chain partners. During the build phase, we employ a lot of companies and we’re very keen to help them ensure they offer opportunities to local communities. If I think

LEN DLEASE

about a project we’re doing in Leicestershire, we will spend 25 per cent, as a minimum with local SMEs. These are SMEs in the area defined by a distance from within our project. We will also ensure that 25 per cent of the new jobs go to local people. So irrespective, we look for those opportunities to work with our supply chain partners to do that. Our partners also sign up to our living wage [agreement], which is above the national living wage. We work with our delivery partners to make sure those opportunities are there.

We also have an organisation called BeOnsite, which fundamentally focuses on bringing opportunities to long term unemployed people who may have struggled to get into employment or hold jobs down.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve worked with around 700 people, the majority of which are from a BAME or gender diverse background.

We support and mentor them and coax them into long term employment. A large number are ex-offenders, so we use BeOnsite to help people who find it very difficult to access employment. We work with the Ministry of Justice to assess how we bring them in.

As an example, in Glen Parva [Leicestershire], we are using a programme which will mean that a workforce proportion of roughly 25 per cent will be prisoners out on licence. We’re getting them into the supply chain and helping them to understand what it means to have a job, a commitment and a trade. We offer an ability for people to talk to us. We have a team set up to engage with these individuals on what it means and the commitment that’s needed. We will then look at that individual, what skills we think are appropriate and find within our supply chain partners, those looking

in the job market for individuals. We will then work with our partners to sponsor that long-term unemployed person into their company. We keep touch with them via a mentoring programme, but also have an oversight to make sure they’re getting the support, they understand about the commitments they’re making to the employee organisation and also to level out any bumps in the road in terms of housing and so on. It is difficult but it’s very rewarding. This sector of society is one with which we don’t have the greatest success rates in terms of integrating back into the workforce - so that’s why we’ve challenged it.

It’s an inspiring programme - what does being part of it and working with this wider team on projects mean to Lendlease staff?

Our purpose is ‘together we create value through places where communities thrive’. That runs through our organisation, it’s quite strong. Whichever project you’re working on, it’s about how you actually bring to life that ambition. Often people in organisations really want to help and contribute, but the difficult thing, sometimes, is finding out how to do that. The joy of BeOnsite is that it’s there and our own employees can immediately access it, and there’s a portal to do it. If you’re working in a company, it’s very hard to understand how you can help. Genuinely, everybody in almost all companies I’ve ever come across want to help, they want to contribute and they want to make a difference. BeOnsite allows people to get involved. In the end, people want careers and want to be successful, but they want to do it in such a way that they’re proud of.

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G AT E L E Y P L C

Responsible Gateley WITH ROD WALDIE, CEO OF LEGAL AND P R O F E S S I O N A L S E R V I C E S G R O U P, G A T E L E Y P L C

Fit for Purpose:

What does social mobility mean to Gateley?

We are not a traditional law firm. We used to be a partnership, but we transitioned into becoming a PLC in 2015. That really began the creation of a more diverse business in which, through shared ownership, we’re all incentivised to collectively succeed.

There are many parts to our foundation for success but vitally we’ve got an environment in which everyone is welcome and valued. That allows people to play to their strengths in a business which has an infrastructure for opportunity and fair career progression. And that’s regardless of the background of the individuals that work for us. Of course, we’ve got lots of traditional entrances to professional services, but we’ve also got multiple examples of people in the business who’ve joined us from non-academic backgrounds. They’ve progressed their careers with this in a way that they probably never anticipated.

That’s great to see because they become an inspirational role

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model for others in the business who are from similar backgrounds and have ambitions for success. I actually believe that through all of that we deliver better outcomes to our clients, through the diversity of thought, talent and experience we have in the business.

How do you access that more diverse group of people?

We’ve got wider career paths for our people. Yes, a number of people are in the business going through traditional career programmes in either law, or any of the other consultancy services we offer. In legal services for example, however, we also offer what we call qualifying paralegal status. This is effectively where people join us as paralegals that may or may not be from a university background. They have an opportunity to grow with us and train with us as a paralegal to a point where they achieve a status in training, that actually the Law Society recognises as the equivalent status of somebody going through a traditional training programme. We reflect this career programme across the business for graduates and non-graduates. So, we’re attractive to a wide range of people with a wide range of backgrounds, because we offer both traditional and non-traditional career paths.

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1 Strong foundations in Early Years

school years 2 Successful

health and well-being 8 Good

How do you address the challenge of making sure that talented individuals from diverse backgrounds are able to progress to senior levels of the business?

I think talent is attracted to a clear strategy, and we are very clear about our strategic intent and ambition. People tend to stick with a business that’s got a clear strategy that they believe in. We do find that when people join Gateley they tend to stay at Gateley.

This gives us a much longer period of time in which to work with our employees to recognise their strengths and encourage them into roles in the business that give them a career path that probably is above and beyond what they imagined they might do when they first joined us. We have a very robust set of mentoring programmes in the business that are designed to spot talent and help people accelerate their career through the business. We have a number of networking groups within the business internally as well that ensure we’re recognising our responsibility to creating a more diverse and eclectic workforce within the business. I do think we’ve got the tools in the business to identify talent and to help it progress through the business.

From the client perspective, are you seeing more of them showing an interest in getting more diverse advice and service provision?

For sure, certainly more in the large corporate arena than in the

3 Positive destinations Post 16+

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recruitment 5 Open

Achieve equality, through diversity & inclusion

smaller SME arena. Certainly, some of our larger corporates now believe that they do get better outcomes through a more diverse set of talents on their mandates. There are a number of organisations in the large corporate arena that are very focused on diversity and very interested to know what the makeup of our teams is, and how we ensure and progress a more diverse workforce within the business.

Having come in as the CEO last year, how different does this approach feel to you and how do your teams respond to it?

At the core of our strategy, if you trace back to 2015, was what we called our DD&I strategy. This stands for differentiate through diversity – and incentivise. We’ve built a business that is a wider professional services business, so it’s differentiated against our traditional single skill law firm competitor market. We now have consultancy businesses in Gateley that complement our legal services market, and therefore make our business much more interesting to the people that work in it; and actually, much more interesting to the clients we engage with. Through a more diverse set of services to clients, we’ve built a more diverse business. Actually 50 per cent of the people in our business are shareholders, so there’s a much greater focus on us as a collective, ensuring success for the business.

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Using the Levelling Up Goals to manage change MANAGING CHANGE IS A CHALLENGE. YOU CAN O N LY J U D G E H O W W E L L YO U ’ R E D O I N G I F YO U ’ V E ESTABLISHED A BASELINE, IDENTIFIED TARGETS A N D T H E N A R E A B L E T O E F F E C T I V E LY M E A S U R E THE PROGRESS YOU’VE MADE. That will be a key issue for the new Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael Gove, as we await this autumn’s White Paper. There are high expectations from the public, as well as his parliamentary colleagues, but delivering opportunity to those parts of the country where in the past it has been far too thin on the ground will undoubtedly be a long-term challenge. We will need to be able to assess and evaluate progress over the coming months and years within a framework of shared language and common goals.

The Levelling up Goals launched earlier this year with the Purpose Coalition provides that common architecture - for businesses, civil society and other organisations, including the public sector, who are part of the push on levelling up.

From early years through to career progression, from digital connectivity to good health and wellbeing, they cover all the elements that can contribute to a level playing field of opportunity.

Many businesses now ‘get’ why it is important that they look more closely at the social element in their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agendas. The Levelling Up Goals define the “S” bit of ESG. Some of the most committed businesses have partnered with the Purpose Coalition to articulate their

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purpose more clearly and then use the Levelling Up Goals to help them make the right choices on where and how to focus their actions. Leading the way is the legal and professional services group, Gateley - it’s the very first business to publish its strategy on delivering social impact using the 14 Levelling Up Goals in its recently launched Responsible Business report.

By setting specific targets linked to the Goals and their impact on People, Potential and Planet, Gateley can demonstrate the difference it is making to its employees, its clients and its communities. With a commitment to measure its performance on a quarterly basis, the results will be transparent and quantifiable. In real terms this means articulating its current achievement as well as its ambition for the future – for example on People, it partners with the Greater Birmingham Professional Services Academy delivering workshops that support students in their learning but also aims to explore Disability Confident Employer status; on Potential, it offers parental support and coaching after time away from work but has also piloted a law returners programme in Leeds; on Planet, it acts on behalf of major housebuilders, advising on sustainability but is also aiming to deliver the actions set out in its energy saving plan.

Like many large businesses, Gateley’s reach goes far beyond the company itself. By using the Levelling Up Goals to focus clearly on what it is doing well but also to acknowledge where there is a need to do more, it has the capacity to deliver a coherent strategy for change. The Levelling Up Goals now provide a shared language on the “S” element of ESG and a platform where other organisations can compare and contrast their own experiences. Gateley is already leading by example with many others, from the private and public sector and education, also set to follow.

Rt Hon Justine Greening - Chair, Levelling Up Goals

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Transforming people and communities “IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CVS AND INTERVIEW PRACTICE – IT’S ABOUT ALL THE THINGS IMPACTING ON THAT PERSON”

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Reed in Partnership is on a mission to positively transform people and their communities. Here managing director Rhodri Thomas speaks to Rt Hon Justine Greening about its active part in driving levelling up in Britain.

JG: You’ve been very proactive on levelling up since your inception 21 years ago. Tell us more about your work.

We started out delivering employment services, supporting the long term unemployed and young people in getting back into work. Since then, we’ve diversified quite a lot. We now deliver over 50 different contracts for national and local government, including everything from employment programmes, which is obviously a significant priority at the moment, to supporting the government’s efforts to tackle obesity. We run the NHS diabetes prevention service and other contracts, such as the National Citizen Service working with young people. What brings all of these [programmes] together is a real focus on helping to change people’s lives for the better. Everything we do is about helping

And across all your services, you are addressing the many barriers to social mobility…

Yes, and this is why we’re really excited by the opportunity the levelling up agenda presents. If you look at our employment services, we may be working with somebody who hasn’t had a job in 10 or 15 years. It’s not just a case of ‘here’s a CV, let’s do some interview practice’, it’s about how to integrate all the different things that are impacting on that person. We’ve integrated health provision into our employment services, and we do a lot of focus around mindset. Critically over the last six to nine months, there’s been a massive focus on digital inclusion, because essentially, with so many services and job interviews moving online, we’ve got to be able to put a package together with the full range of support people need. We work in some of the poorest communities in the country and there are multiple aspects involved in getting someone to reach their potential and, also, to be able to set goals for themselves which are achievable.

How has the pandemic affected your work and the underlying issues you are focused on?

It’s easy to be all doom and gloom, but there are some interesting aspects in terms of how the pandemic has shifted things. We do a lot of work helping people with disabilities back into employment. Some of the changes we’ve seen which I think will continue, like hybrid working, have benefitted people with disabilities in being able to work from home.

For instance, we’ve seen a trend of call centre and customer service roles where we’ve been able to put more disabled people into those jobs than we would have been able to before the pandemic. In terms of how the situation is going to play out, a lot of people will have been on furlough for a long time and won’t have worked for a year. This really does impact people’s health and the structure they have around their life.

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people achieve their goals. My job essentially boils down to three main things. One, making sure we deliver good services to the people coming on to our provision, two, ensuring we’re a great place to work so that we retain our staff. Thirdly, making sure that we’ve got the right long-term strategy for the business. We are lucky that we’re a family-owned business, so we are able to make very long-term decisions, rather than having some of the pressures companies on stock market may face.

We now deliver over 50 different contracts for national and local government.

It means, for a lot of people, there has been a lot less contact with others. This can lead to issues around isolation. A lot of the programmes we’re running now are about trying to get people together in group-based sessions, including helping people with sleep patterns, for instance. That’s where we’ve tried to focus more, because we realise that a lot of our customers are quite isolated. Economically at the moment, the jobs market is rebounding, there are a lot more jobs becoming available. But going back to the levelling up agenda, a lot of those jobs will be insecure employment on short-term, zero-hour contracts.

We know that that kind of situation really does impact on people’s ability to plan and to be able to make the right decisions for them.

What sort of work would you do with people in that situation who want to get their life back on track?

We do a lot of work, particularly with younger people, around work experience. We find that if you can help people to establish a routine that really helps to get people’s mindset in the right place to start actively looking for work. A lot of what we do comes down to helping people set goals for themselves.

We’ve had to recruit a lot of people into our business to deal with the increase in unemployment. We’ve brought people in from outside the sector with what we believe are the right transferable skills. We’ve identified, for instance, that travel agents are fantastic employment advisors, because they’ve got a good skill set. We’ve really focused on being able to talk to people. Some of our own staff who are doing a fantastic job, are doing something they wouldn’t have dreamed of a couple of years ago.

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Giant steps in addressing inequality JG: You joined Amazon in April 2020, in the middle of the first lockdown. Tell us about the first few months in the job.

I was home-schooling three kids, while also building a team virtually, so on a personal level it felt like quite a challenge [and] not what I had anticipated would be the start of a new job.

Amazon is famously a company that looks ahead that can move very fast. At the time, it very quickly recognised the importance that testing would come to have. The company decided to build in-house testing capabilities from scratch, to regularly test frontline employees, whether or not they had symptoms. This meant building an in-house lab in Salford. We started testing people in September and so far, we’ve performed over one million tests for employees in the UK and in Europe. That was very much about protecting employees and our broader communities. It’s a good example of how we work with local government who were incredibly supportive and understood the importance and the urgency of what we were trying to do.

THE RELIANCE OF UK CONSUMERS ON AMAZON INTENSIFIED IN 2020, WITH THE ONLINE RETAIL GIANT SUPPORTING THE NATION VIA AN ARMY OF ON-SITE STAFF AND DELIVERY DRIVERS THROUGHOUT ENFORCED LOCKDOWNS. IN THE BACKGROUND, THE COMPANY HAS ALSO BEEN WORKING HARD AT LEADING THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA, AS MONICA ARIÑO, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY (UK AND IREL AND) AT THE FIRM, EXPL AINS HERE IN DISCUSSION WITH RT HON JUSTINE GREENING.

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And you almost had to set up a separate division of the business dedicated to dealing with the challenges of the pandemic?

Yes, and there were a number of teams, all ultra-focused, with a real sense of purpose in terms of what they were trying to deliver.

Amazon is a big company, but it has a culture and a way of working that allows you to put together teams with clear objectives and goals and to move at pace. I was really impressed by how the COVID response worked. Of course there was also general leadership; and people across the company learning to play a role themselves in protecting employees and adapting ways of working.

We introduced a lot of changes to our processes and our systems on site.

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The pandemic has exposed inequalities throughout society, making levelling up more important than ever. What does levelling up mean to Amazon?

We are very clear that we have a role to play [in it] and that all businesses have a role to play. We are very conscious of our size and scale, and the fact that we’re a very big employer. We have that opportunity to provide lots of people with jobs. Whether they’re in the north or south, our sites are often in deprived communities.

So, starting with the obvious, it is about jobs, and we work very closely with Jobcentre Plus [and] some pre-employment training programmes and sector-based work academies to support upskilling unemployed workers and preparing them to be successful with their own recruitment processes. That is working really well.

Last year through these programmes, we employed over 1000 people that had been in long term unemployment. That is the very first step, but of course, it’s more than just about providing jobs that are essential. We are very keen on the skills agenda and making sure that, in addition to the jobs, we make a difference in the communities, in tackling climate change and in promoting social mobility.

Would you say that the pandemic influenced Amazon in taking some of its existing levelling up approaches and making them even bigger and more impactful?

Absolutely, the pandemic undoubtedly compounded the need for up-skilling and re-skilling. We were doing a lot already.

But our leadership is very passionate about this and we have supercharged some of the programmes that we already had [as a result of COVID-19].

Tell us more about your up-skilling and re-skilling programmes.

We have a programme called Career Choice, which is designed for employees that are looking to pursue a career outside of Amazon. We will cover 95 per cent of all tuition, books and fees, with a budget of up to £1000 to allow employees, whilst working, to study for other things. At the moment we have 3500 participants. Earlier this year, we announced a commitment of £10m to train up to 5000 employees through the programme and the stories are great. These programmes really can make a difference. We have a colleague who came to the UK aged 19 and started working for us as an agency worker and then became a fixed employee. After a year, she started on the programme and worked and studied while building a family; studying in the evenings. She then moved on to work for the NHS. That’s just one story, but there are many, many like that.

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Amazonian’s mission to close the opportunity gap AMAZON’S IMPACT ON COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE UK EXTENDS FAR BEYOND ONLINE RETAIL AND HOME ENTER TAINMENT. R T HON JUS TINE GREENING SPEAKS T O BETH KNIGHT, EUROPEAN HEAD OF AMAZON IN THE C O M M U N I T Y, T O F I N D O U T M O R E .

Fit for Purpose: Tell us more about your role within Amazon?

I sit within our corporate affairs business and work with our company leadership teams across Europe on a full and public response, proactively and reactively. In the past year, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of our focus has been on supporting vulnerable groups that have really been impacted by the pandemic. If you talk to somebody working within Amazon’s commercial business, you hear a lot about our customer obsession and focus on customers.

For Amazon in the community, our customer is underserved and underrepresented young people. So that is a big brief in the UK, with people in social mobility cold spots.

Presumably the fallout from the pandemic has created both challenges, and opportunities, for Amazon’s community work?

I joined Amazon at the height of the pandemic and was so proud seeing the response that we had given in those early days. That has continued throughout, and we have a COVID-19 taskforce operating internally which has representation from across the organisation.

We also [work with] charity partners, including Magic Breakfast, [with which] we have delivered around four million breakfast packs to vulnerable groups since the start of the pandemic,

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through school partnerships and directly to people’s homes during lockdown, and in holiday periods when schools are closed. We’ve also been working with the Prince’s Trust around support for local businesses, helping small businesses to use Amazon’s platforms and services. Other activities include our device donations campaign with Teach First. So, it’s been a busy, but extremely rewarding, time.

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level positions for their skill sets. In bringing them in, we also had to make sure that they had the right care and support network around them to help them succeed and feel supported in their role.

So not only are you creating opportunities, but you are also helping disadvantaged people to make the most of them?

Yes. Any person that has had a hard time, starting from a point of disadvantage or perhaps struggling with mental health or illness, needs support. As an employer that doesn’t just stop when you hire people. If you’re making a conscious decision to level the playing field and bring people in equitably and support their career journey, then you do that through programmes like this.

My job in this context is, when I see great programmes that have started in the organisation and being brought forward by staff, to find a way to bring them to national leadership attention, to invest in and grow them.

How has your social mobility-focused activity evolved during the pandemic?

We have programmes that we’ve started investing in more heavily as a result of the pandemic. For example, we have virtual fulfilment centre tours. Schools around the UK can register to meet an Amazonian, who will jump on a Zoom call and talk to a classroom of children about what it’s like to work at Amazon. They share a glimpse into the lives and professional careers that we have. We also have a lot of employability programmes.

Tell us more about Amazon’s role in driving opportunity from within.

It’s definitely something that the organisation should be really proud of. One of the things I love about Amazon is the entrepreneurial culture and the action bias that you see in employees. Our relationship with Barnardo’s is a great example of this. Our workforce engagement team brought forward a proposal to leadership - completely led by them not instigated by me or my team – to help people in the local community. The programme then started within our Tilbury fulfilment centre, to give more training, coaching and support for people going through the application process to join Amazon; and figure out the right entry

Are apprenticeships also an important part of your social mobility work?

Yes, we engage with the government’s apprenticeship schemes, utilising a significant amount of our levy. What we don’t utilise, we donate on, and others can build their own programmes. Our team in Amazon in the Community has been involved in an employee review group to set up a corporate responsibility and sustainability apprenticeship. People working in corporate responsibility, sustainability and community investment should also represent and reflect the people that they are trying to help.

Of course, Amazon is also able to deliver positive impact through enabling purposeful buying habits.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone reading this, I’m on the ethical consumer end of the spectrum. When I engage with Amazon online, I use Smile, which enables five per cent of everything I’m buying to go to charity. Amazon also has a great navigation function which enables you to drill into things you specifically want to find within the website. For example, I look at things like warehouse bargains where a lot of the returned items come. I’m also a big fan of using refurbished products. You can also drill down through local suppliers. I prefer to know that items come from the UK because the chances are that they will have [generated] fewer carbon emissions. Amazon is also investing heavily in companies that support climate friendly technology infrastructure, such as the solar panels that run our buildings and generate energy back into the grid. As a consumer I can filter products to find those which are more ecologically friendly.

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Easing the path to a career in law RPC IS A L AW FIRM EMBEDDED IN THE LEVELLING UP L AW INITIATIVE, WHICH IS WORKING TO ENABLE CIT Y L AW F I R M S T O B E T T E R O P E N U P AC C E S S T O O P P O R T U N I T Y. IT ALSO HAS ITS OWN INNOVATIVE AND EXTENSIVE A P P R O A C H T O L E V E L L I N G U P. A T T H E H E A R T O F T H I S E F F O R T I S E L L I N O R D AV E Y, E A R LY TA L E N T L E A D , W H O S P O K E T O F I T F O R P U R P O S E R E C E N T LY.

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thought ‘how can we do this completely virtually, while still having the same number of people joining and still offering the same variance?’. We had to get this right. Fortunately at RPC, we have fantastic line managers who were fully prepared to work with the new hires to make sure they felt really comfortable. We did all the pre-joining stuff I mentioned virtually, and, in some ways, we were able to get a few more people involved than if we were doing in person. The key point was engagement. How could we recreate those moments that you might miss out on in the office that will really help to build your confidence? We set up a number of initiatives, including encouraging managers to set up virtual coffees with their new recruits, arranging lots of virtual socials and playing ‘coffee roulette’; putting names in hat and having to connect with whichever name came out with yours. They had to arrange a 30 minute catch up and it was a great way to meet different people across the firm.

Tell us more about the remit of an early talent lead I manage the recruitment and development of our UK-based trainee solicitors and apprentices. These are the individuals at the start of their career. My role involves anything from going out to different universities or schools to talk about our programmes, to reviewing applications and running various internships and insight days, as well as assessment days. I’m there for the duration of training contracts or partnerships, for the whole journey from the start through to when the individuals hopefully qualify and secure permanent positions at the firm.

So, you are heavily involved in helping people make the transition into the legal sector, which, like most industries, can involve a tough working environment?

Yes. Having a career in law is challenging and we don’t hide this - we are very honest with applicants. Whether you are a lawyer or a member of the business services team, there are obviously some key challenges particularly for junior staff who have never worked in a commercial environment before. They may have had some form of part-time roles which have been really valuable with great transferable skills, but the day-to-day reality of working in a fast paced, very responsive environment can be quite challenging.

We run onboarding programmes for our trainees, giving them a two-year lead-in time before they start. We make sure to meet with them a number of times during that period and run skill sessions.

It’s about getting them to think about their personal brand, social etiquette, communication and teamwork. When it comes to their start date, they’ve got a bit more confidence, they know the kind of skills they’ll need to succeed and are fully aware of what their role is.

How hard was it to instill this work readiness during the pandemic, with remote working the new normal?

I must admit that March 2020 was a very busy month for us. We

How does RPC prioritise social mobility?

It’s a key part of inclusion and diversity as a whole, and of our strategy as a firm. We’ve got people at the firm who really believe in it and see the importance of it, not just from a social perspective but because it’s the right thing to do. Our people, future recruits and clients are expecting us to be accountable and to have a really positive social impact where we can. But the other factor is that, with a more diverse group of individuals, we are able to be better as a business and provide a better client service, which is what we are here to do as a law firm. It works from both sides. From an early talent perspective, it’s a great opportunity to get diverse people in from the very start of their careers and hopefully train and develop them, giving us a fantastic pool of home-grown talent.

So it’s incredibly important to the firm. Social mobility has its own work stream within the firm led by one of our partners who has a social mobility background himself. We also work with other organisations like Aspiring Solicitors and Rare Recruitment, and use contextualised recruitment.

Please tell us a bit more about contextualised recruitment We use a tool to screen applicants [based on] social mobility metrics, to give us more information about the candidates we are reviewing. We can tell if a person has outperformed their peers.

For example, if they had a set of A-level grades of Bs and Cs, when the school’s average grades were Ds and Es, the candidate has massively outperformed their peers in that situation. This tells us a lot about the individual in terms of their resilience and drive. Also, how have they been able to achieve these results in an environment where they probably weren’t expecting to? We’re also able to see whether a person was part of the care system or from a social mobility cold spot. All of this feeds into how we review a candidate’s application.

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SAG E FIT FOR PURPOSE

Q&A with Amanda Cusdin SAGE IS THE LEADER IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCIAL, H R A N D PAY RO L L T E C H N O L O GY F O R S M A L L A N D MID-SIZED BUSINESSES. FOUNDED IN A PUB IN NEWCASTLE 40 YEARS AGO, SAGE HAS GROWN TO BECOME ONE OF THE UK’S BIGGEST TECHNOLOGY CO M PA N I E S I N T H E U K , A N D H A S R E C E N T LY OPENED A NEW £20M GLOBAL HQ IN THE NOR TH EAS T.

Sage’s purpose is to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive. By digitising business processes and relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, banks and governments, the company’s digital network connects SMBs – removing friction and delivering insights.

The company is also using its time, technology and experience to tackle digital inequality, economic inequality and the climate crisis.

Rt Hon Justine Greening caught up with Sage’s Chief People Officer, Amanda Cusdin, to find out more about its work supporting Levelling Up.

Fit for Purpose: : Amanda, tell me about your role at Sage.

As Chief People Officer I am responsible for all aspects of our global people strategy, and I also have overall responsibility for our Sustainability and Society Strategy.

Since I became CPO we’ve adopted a listening strategy and we have used insights from our colleagues to make changes across all areas of our people strategy and transform the colleague experience. That collaborative approach has been particularly valuable during the pandemic, and we moved to an ‘always listening’ model which has enabled us to quickly adjust our programme of engagement and support in response to what colleagues have told us.

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We’ve also worked with colleagues to co-create our new hybrid approach to how, where and when we work at Sage, which we’re calling Flexible Human Work. Ultimately, our aim is to unlock full flexibility across all stages of a colleague’s career, which we believe will help us attract and retain a more diverse range of talent.

Is it fair to say that diversity and inclusion are integral to your success as a business today?

Absolutely. We are very much a people-centric technology business and we genuinely believe that diversity brings better outcomes.

As a global company, we must reflect the diverse world we work in, and we want customers to feel that they are working with people who respect their views and understand their background.

We know that a broader range of perspectives helps generate better debate and ultimately leads to better ideas to serve our customers.

And of course building an inclusive business that thrives on diversity is vital when it comes to competing for the best talent in an increasingly competitive market. We want people from the most diverse backgrounds to be able to come to Sage and really thrive.

So we’re committed to building an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds and viewpoints of our customers, partners and communities.

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How have you created a culture that ensures diversity and inclusion flows throughout the business?

It starts with our senior leaders, as our culture is ultimately set from the top. So we’re providing targeted training and education to help our leaders be more intentionally inclusive. We’re also running a reverse mentoring programme, which is helping members of our senior team build greater empathy with some of our colleagues from underrepresented groups.

As always, we are being led by our data. We’re encouraging colleagues to voluntarily and confidentially share more information about themselves, as part of our data capture project. This is helping us to build a picture of our colleague populations, so we can remove barriers that already exist, and ensure that we are not inadvertently creating new ones.

One thing we have found to be particularly successful is something we call Colleague Success Networks. This is where colleagues come together and share their experiences of different aspects of diversity. For example, what it’s like to be neurodiverse or a female working in a very male dominated industry. The colleagues in our networks also play an invaluable role helping to advise Sage on when it should speak out on certain issues.

Looking ahead, we now have an ambitious three-year Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy which will be the roadmap that charts our DEI journey. We know we’re still only at the start of that journey, so we’re committed to having open, honest conversations with colleagues across our business, and then working together with them to create a culture in which everyone at Sage feels they belong and are empowered to succeed.

How does Sage support Levelling Up beyond its own organisation?

Firstly, by championing and supporting SMBs themselves.

We know from our own research that having a positive societal and environmental impact matters to SMBs, but unlike large corporates they don’t always have the time, resource or expertise to support their ambitions. The risk is that SMBs get left behind if they cannot prioritise the changes they want to make – and we have a role to play to help ensure that doesn’t happen.

For example, last year we launched a Sustainability Hub that provides advice and support from experts to help businesses in the UK and Ireland who want to progress their own climate strategies.

We’re also helping to knock down barriers for those who want to set up their own business.

We know that starting a business and earning independently can be a route to a better life, but we also know there are barriers preventing people from making the leap. Research we conducted with the Entrepreneurs Network found that four in ten people we interviewed have an idea for a business but lack the confidence and support to take the next step. They also underestimated how

much money they would need for set up, and how far they could go if they had the support they needed.

We know that the right support, delivered in targeted and accessible ways, will enable many of these individuals to take the next step and start their own business.

At Sage, we’ve been looking at how we can play a role through our partnerships with other organisations to help people realise their dream of being their own boss. For instance, we’re investing in a partnership with Kiva, a non-profit that works to improve financial inclusion in communities who find it hard to start or grow businesses.

Finally, we’re looking further ahead at how we can help the young entrepreneurs of the future develop the digital skills they need to succeed.

Does your work on supporting entrepreneurship extend to schools and local communities?

Yes, this is a big part of our wider Sustainability and Society strategy. For example, we’ve committed to train more than 13,000 young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills, through our work with the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and FIRST LEGO League.

We also have a programme called Sage Pathways, aimed at people who might have had a career break and have been finding it hard to get back into work. Often, it’s about a lack of confidence and not knowing where to get started. We are providing free workshops, delivered by Sage and some of our partners, and aimed at helping people to think about how they get back into employment, what they need to prepare for interviews, and also giving them a confidence boost.

We have also recruited a number of those who attended into roles at Sage, and we will continue to do that as part of the next phase of the programme.

As a result of the pandemic, are you seeing more would-be entrepreneurs emerging, perhaps revisiting that kernel of an idea they had years ago, after having time to give it more consideration during lockdowns and so on?

We’re definitely starting to see that shift as people start to reevaluate their lifestyle and think about what they want to get out of their career. Priorities have shifted and people are working and operating very differently to how they were before the pandemic.

We’re really keen to support that change and help those from underrepresented groups who have a business idea to become their own boss, so we’re investing in providing training and mentorship to disadvantaged young people looking to develop their business ideas. Having someone who can mentor and support you as you navigate your way through those early days is vital and also gives you the confidence to keep going. It really makes a difference.

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ADECCO

Creating brighter futures ALEX FLEMING IS REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF NORTHERN EUROPE AT ADECCO, THE WORLD’S L ARGEST HUMAN RESOURCES PROVIDER AND TEMPORARY STAFFING FIRM. THE FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 COMPANY IS WORKING E X T E N S I V E LY T O A D D R E S S T H E O P P O R T U N I T Y G A P A N D T H E U K ’ S L AC K O F S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y, A S A L E X E X P L A I N S H E R E .

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Fit for Purpose: Encouraging work readiness is a dominant theme in your levelling up approach. Why is this so important to Adecco?

We recognise the importance of really connecting young people successfully with future career opportunities. I do believe that this responsibility lies with employers, local government and educators collectively. Technology is enabling industries to evolve at such a fast pace and, because of this, entry into the job market has become even more complex. On top of this, young talent also has to contend with the pandemic of course, but it is encouraging to know that the Gatsby Foundation stated recently that 72 per cent of school and college leaders believe careers guidance has become even more important as a result of COVID-19.

One of your standout programmes supporting young people into employment is Brighter Futures. Tell us more about it The programme is really about using strong networks.

We create cross-industry experiences for all talents and champion underrepresented youth. Through this, we created the Talent Collective, which is like-minded employers who attend programmes, promoting youth empowerment to help them bridge the gap between the education system and the world of work, really boosting the talent pools for the future. We have three programmes that we develop with Skills Builder, the careers and enterprise company. With Bright, for 11 to 15-yearolds, it’s about spreading awareness and those essential skills and tying them back to the world of work; linking what they

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We create cross-industry experiences for all talents and champion underrepresented youth.

do every day in their education, through insights and mentoring support. Plan Bright, for 16 to 18-year-olds, connects different industries to students through a two-week work experience programme. The idea is to give young people the experience of all the different industries and opportunities that they have the potential to reach as they come to the latter stages of education.

Shine Bright, for people aged 18+, is a more typical work experience programme, driving multiple routes of entry into early careers within the Adecco group. We’re also really keen to bring clients on board and to have young people getting experience in all industries, within SMEs and large organisations. It’s not just about people coming into Adecco, it’s about giving them pathways into other companies too, and helping to plug gaps.

Young people don’t necessarily make the connection between what they’re doing at school every day and the future path they might take when they leave school or college.

We are giving them an understanding of all the different industries and types of roles and how they connect that to what they’re doing in school.

It must be highly rewarding to see young people experiencing lightbulb moments when they start to think about their futures Absolutely. We’ve really learned so much as an employer by having young people around. They’re helping employers to understand what is going to be important in the future in order to attract young people to join those organisations; and what the future employee value proposition looks like. It’s really about listening, understanding and learning as an employer, as well, of course, as equipping them with something they can take through their education to when they are looking for a job.

Might the fresh enthusiasm and insight from young people also helped to inspire leadership teams within your organisation?

Yes, for sure. We actually run a programme called CEO for One Month where we give young people an opportunity to apply to shadow the Adecco CEOs in 60 countries around the globe for a month of paid employment. As a result of this programme, we’re starting to see clients looking to replicate it and they are engaging with Adecco to support them in doing so. They are also looking to widen it to the CFO or the CMO, enabling young people to spend time with different leadership roles to get exposure and experience in different industries and organisations.

This touches on another initiative we are increasingly seeing from purpose-driven organisations – shadow boards, often installed at mid or lower levels of the organisation to help to connect people with opportunity I think shadow boards are incredibly powerful. The important thing is that you give people a real voice and really listen and take action based on what they are saying. Of course, you can’t always implement everything in an organisation that is being asked of you, but really listening, understanding and attributing those great ideas back to that group of individuals is so powerful in terms of retention of talent. It also helps senior leadership teams to learn. It’s important that senior leaders stay connected to people on the ground and that the people on the ground feel that senior leaders really understand the challenges they are facing today, rather than the old-school ‘ivory towers’ type of messaging.

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“Purpose is unbelievably powerful, but we have limited bandwidth” FENCHURCH L AW IS A BOUTIQUE L AW FIRM WHICH IS P L AY I N G A C E N T R A L RO L E I N D R I V I N G S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y I N T H E L E G A L S E C T O R . I T D O E S T H I S E X T E R N A L LY, INCLUDING THROUGH ITS POSITION ON THE LEVELLING UP L AW COALITION, AND IN-HOUSE VIA A RANGE OF INNOVATIVE PROGRAMMES AND ACTIVITIES.

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As managing partner, David Pryce balances his time between casework and running the firm. He took time out of his busy schedule to talk to Fit for Purpose about his firm’s work to close the opportunity gap.

Fit for Purpose: What are some of the steps you take as a firm to recruit from the widest possible pool of talent?

The first thing to say is that we probably don’t do this nearly as well as we would like to do and we are, in the legal profession, on a whole journey of improvement. The main shifts we’ve taken over the past few years is to move from looking at the characteristics we saw as disqualifying characteristics, and looking at them exclusively as qualifying characteristics. To explain, academic ability, for example, is something that’s very important to every law firm. They want to know that all the people who are joining them have a high degree of academic ability. But if you look at academic ability in terms of a disqualifying characteristic, you may say ‘unless you’ve been to Oxbridge or Russell Group university, if you don’t have a 2:1 or higher or meet a particular threshold then you are disqualified’.

So, we’d need to be satisfied that our candidates have a high academic ability, but we wouldn’t look at anything that happened in the past as being something that disqualifies them from it. But there may be other ways to demonstrate that you have a sufficient level of academic ability. You can take that approach of qualifying and disqualifying characteristics and apply it to everything that is interesting to us as a firm. When you do that, it allows you to look at candidates in terms of their potential, and not exclusively in terms of their current performance. Of course, you want people who are performing at a high level at the moment, but what’s even more important is having people who have the ability to grow and perform better in the future.

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Once you have a diverse range of talent through the door, how do you ensure it is able to fulfil its potential?

It’s about doing everything we can to nurture potential. A lot of the discussion in the legal sector as a whole has been focused on fairness. That’s really important, but it doesn’t go far enough on its own to meaningfully change the behaviour of the people whose behaviour needs to change. For me, there needs to be more focus on actually creating the most effective organisations. What we are talking about here is all connected with purpose, and purpose is unbelievably powerful. We’ve only individually got a limited amount of bandwidth for purpose, however. As individuals, if we are purpose driven, which people increasingly are, we have one or two purposes that we are really passionate about; and we are going to be active supporters of those purposes. The narrative is focused primarily on basic fairness, but I think there’s a risk that the support the legal sector is going to provide is going to be largely passive. It seems to me that there is a huge opportunity to flick the switch in the minds of the leaders within the legal community and to show how important this is in terms of competitive advantage.

If we don’t level up, then we are effectively drawing talent from an artificially restricted pool. If we think that all the best candidates look and sound the same as each other, we are wrong, but also, we are recruiting from a talent pool that is too small. If we realise that the best and most high potential candidates could come from any kind of background, then this frees us up to recruit for a much wider talent pool and gives us a huge competitive advantage.

this and call it a problem, but equally an opportunity, and if we act and work diligently towards it for a long enough period of time, we will make significant progress. Will we ever get to the perfect place that we would like to get to? Who knows, but if we can make significant progress from where we are now that would be great.

How have you found the experience of being involved in the Levelling Up Law project, which unites City law firms in closing the opportunity gap?

You could have asked people involved in the project a year or two ago whether it’s something they generally support, and they would have said ‘yes’. But if you asked them what they were doing to push the ideas behind the initiative, if they were being honest, they would probably have said ‘not very much’. This is a great opportunity to force us to take the time away from other things and priorities and turn our attention to [these issues]. It hasn’t always felt easy, because as a legal community we’ve got a lot more to do and recognising you’re at the start of the journey is sometimes difficult. Also, recognising that there is no easy fix can be daunting. Solutions aren’t straightforward but this is something that shouldn’t be put off. If we continue to turn our attention to

Does homeworking negatively affect your ability to support career development within the firm?

This is one of two main concerns I have about being fully remote for too long, the other being the extent to which we can maintain social cohesion between the team. Learning by osmosis is the most important challenge for knowledge workers, and particularly those in the legal sector. My view is that it’s going to be essential for there to be a degree of office space working so that junior people in the team can see how their colleagues and people that have been doing the job longer than them operate. One interesting question that I don’t have the answer to at the moment, is what proportion of your time do you need to spend around other people in order to capture the benefit of learning from them? It’s going to be really interesting to see where we ultimately land with this.

How has remote working as a result of the pandemic affected your progress in closing the opportunity gap in your firm and the wider legal sector?

The one really big change that is happening is that there is less focus on the perception that the best people have to be clustered in and around London. City law firms have always had connotations with the elite, not just in terms of inappropriate exclusivity but also in the quality of output. This is reflected in the amount of money we are entitled to charge our clients. To me, the difference in hourly rates has never really been about geography, it’s been a geographical shorthand for something else which is ‘how sophisticated and specialist is this advice we are getting?’ ‘How experienced is the person that’s doing it?’ With COVID having forced us to see that we can all work remotely, it shows that there is really no need for all the people who are performing at a really high level in the legal community to work in London. There’s no reason why you can’t have a much wider geographical distribution of legal talent and that’s really exciting.

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The direct route to levelling up DA N U TA G R AY J O I N E D D I R E C T L I N E G RO U P A S A NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FIVE YEARS AGO, BEFORE BECOMING ITS CHAIR IN 2020.

As a member of the firm’s leadership team, she not only oversees operations at one of the UK’s biggest general insurance companies, she is also embroiled in the company’s continual focus on supporting levelling up, as she explains here.

Fit for Purpose: How did the pandemic change your approach to levelling up?

During the pandemic, [the need] to do the right thing came through loud and clear. We made sure our people were looked after in moving to work from home, whether that was physically in their homes with support with equipment, or emotionally through leadership and communications. We also looked after our customers as best we could, making sure we were there for them. We offered money back if they weren’t driving as much, for example. But I also saw a big [focus] on society coming through, particularly in the communities around where we operate and have business units across the

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Our employees were able to connect our community fund to help over 200,000 people across the UK.

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The world of work and the world around us is changing rapidly.

UK. Our people were very engaged in helping us to decide how best to support these communities. In that process, we observed deep inequality in parts of this country versus other locations. This made us think very hard about some of the things that we’d been doing as a business, particularly on the dimension of social mobility. We do some phenomenal things on the [environment] and making sure that we have an inclusive culture. But I think the pandemic really helped us to dial up our thinking on how we, as a business, can make a difference in offering opportunity to people that may not have had it in their lives.

Please tell us more about how your employees helped to drive this effort to become more purposeful during the pandemic We connected more closely with each other, as leaders and employees. We saw beyond what we saw from each other in a work context to understand the families and communities that we live in. That brings a sense of reality with it. During the pandemic we found that employees who were very engaged in their local communities, were calling out where the gaps were.

For example, we have a community fund which invested around £3.5m last year. Instead of us determining centrally where this should be deployed, our people called out where we need to help. This ranged from providing PCs to children who didn’t have access to digital technology to do schoolwork from home, to supporting local food banks. Our employees were able to connect our community fund to help over 200,000 people across the UK in

causes they were personally engaged in. It gave us the ability to reconnect at a local level, rather than seeing things in really broad-brush terms.

Were there other positives to come out of the crisis?

We’ve all talked about remote working and the use of technology for decades, but we haven’t really understood that remote working does work. It now means we can be more open-minded about where we recruit people from.

As a business, we’ve done some work identifying cold spots where we traditionally were not recruiting from but are now looking to do so, on the basis that we can find people and give them opportunities to work remotely. The pandemic has made us think much more deeply about what the interventions are that businesses can do in opening up opportunities for people who ordinarily wouldn’t have them at all stages of their careers.

What are some of the highlights of your levelling up approach?

Levelling up is all about providing opportunities; opening up the imagination and helping to give people confidence that those opportunities are there for them, and supporting them [in accessing them]. For example, with outreach and schools, we go into schools and share ideas about what careers look like, mentoring school children either directly or through our supporting organisations such as Teach First.

How do you view the interplay between business and government in driving levelling up?

I think it’s easy to be critical of policymakers. Business also has a responsibility, whether individually or as industry bodies, to share the reality of some of the interventions we are making on social mobility to help policymaking. The world of work and the world around us is changing so rapidly and we have great insight into what is going to be needed in the future that could help to define education policy. I think there is tremendous infrastructure around local government, and the mayors in a number of regions and cities around the country have some great insight into what their local communities require.

We, as businesses, are present in those local communities.

There is a practical sense of policymaking and helping to move implementations along, and also an important role for businesses in helping each other.

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Built to last Meet the innovators challenging long-standing barriers to opportunity in the built environment WSP IS A GLOBAL ENGINEERING AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES CONSULTANCY WHICH, IN THE UK ALONE, EMPLOYS ALMOST 7000 PEOPLE. It is also a company that has challenged itself as a driver of levelling up, both internally and externally through the many projects it works on; with an overriding aim to deliver the maximum positive impact and address societal and global challenges.

Sarah Taylor, an associate at the firm with a particular focus on the environment, and Eabha Elliott, a graduate consultant, spoke to Rt Hon Justine Greening recently about the built environment’s significance in opening up access to opportunities.

Fit for Purpose:

What does good leadership look like in terms of supporting the levelling up agenda within the private sector?

ST: Simply put, without our people we aren’t a business. We are experts and innovators, and we have unique and brilliant people. For us, [levelling up] includes working with schools and universities to promote careers in the engineering industry. Women traditionally haven’t been well represented, and that is something we do a lot of work on. We have apprenticeships, a long-standing graduate programme and a dedicated equality, diversity and inclusion team. Like everyone else, we’re also looking at the gender pay gap; and working to make the business more representative in terms of external opportunity. This means we have a massive opportunity in partnering with our clients on some of the biggest

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projects in the world, to really influence the built environment around equality, inclusion, sustainability and carbon reduction.

From a levelling up perspective, how significant is the built environment?

EE: People don’t realise how integral transport is, for example, in terms of the levelling up agenda and sustainable development goals. Particularly for marginalised people, for women and people with disabilities for example, you really need to transport to enable access to healthcare and education. It’s really important to raise people’s awareness of [inequalities] in the built environment. A [recent] report identified how the built environment was geared historically towards the travel patterns of men, and sometimes gave them an easier time than women. This is not something that has been done intentionally, it’s something that came as a consequence of sectors that were really heavily male dominated for many, many years. We place priority on highways, cars and ways of getting quickly from rural areas into the city centre. Whereas women are more likely to, for example, do what we call ‘trip chaining’, perhaps picking up kids and grocery shopping, on transport systems that aren’t really catered for that. I think it’s important to raise people’s awareness of this.

How do you address these inequalities in the built environment which can impact on access to opportunity?

ST: This is where the difference between equity and equality comes in. Equality is offering everyone the same opportunity, which is fine, but that doesn’t infer access. Equity is making the adjustments to be able to offer everybody the same opportunity.

Inclusion benefits everyone. Some things we’ve mentioned are

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gender specific, but will have much wider benefits. This is about taking a really positive and strong stance as a company; it is something we really want to hang our hats on. This is something we believe in and is something that has the opportunity to level the playing field. This is why it’s so important to be involved in these projects early. It’s really difficult to be inclusive retrospectively.

We really want to encourage proactively for inclusive design to become the norm, rather than seeing this as just a compliance issue. Whatever your motivation is for doing this, you will reap the benefits. Most inclusive design concepts are just good design, broadening our perspectives, avoiding assumptions and taking into consideration lots of other people’s needs and experiences.

Might failing to address these inequalities have much wider consequences?

ST: There are indirect and direct consequences of non-inclusive spaces, for example. With a park or green space, you can have a direct experience of going to that space whether alone, with friends, playing sports, with your children and so on. The indirect consequence of not being able to access that space is that you do not reap the benefits in terms of health and wellbeing. With accessibility, there is also a wider narrative of missing out on the conversation afterwards. For example, if a TV show which everybody watches has no subtitles, and everybody talks about it afterwards and it is the connection point, you might not be able to watch it or be part of the afterwards. So, this is actually quite far-reaching. From a travel perspective, you could miss out on employment opportunities. Only 84 of 270 tube stations in London, for example, are deemed fully accessible. So, people are missing out on employment and social [opportunities].

How do you give a wider diversity of people a role in addressing some of the built environment’s inequalities?

EE: You don’t know what you don’t know until you ask people.

I remember talking to an architect when I started at WSP about designing something for people who are visually impaired. They said they were almost afraid to ask what they needed in a way that wouldn’t be offensive. But you can’t make assumptions, you have to engage and it’s really important to fully understand other perspectives.

ST: A lot of inclusion issues stem from a lack of understanding, and maybe some complacency, rather than an intentional plan to

discriminate against a group. Yes, we need to challenge prejudice, but we need to move past the narrative of ‘if you’re aware of this you are a good person and if you’re not, you’re a bad person’. This is about focusing on common ground and making conversations.

Not everybody knows everything which is completely normal, but the good news is that if you have representation and you engage, you don’t need to know everything because you have all voices at the table. This is a subject that is growing momentum everywhere, but I do think there are a lot of lessons we can learn from how we approach this conversation, making sure we’re not telling people off, and approaching this as a journey. There are always budget constraints and practicalities, but having a conversation with our clients and with each other to keep inclusion on the agenda, is also part of the change.

Amid this great change, it must be hugely challenging to develop built environment projects that will serve everyone for years to come.

EE: One thing that really sets us apart at WSP is an initiative called Future Ready which ensures that we design for climate resilience, but also for society. We have an increasingly ageing population, increased loneliness and mental health issues, for example, and the world is changing rapidly. It’s important to consider these factors now, rather than having to go back in the future and trying to accommodate everyone. It is easier to do it as you are designing.

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How Cisco is closing the digital divide DAVID MEADS IS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CISCO UK AND IREL AND, A WORLDWIDE LEADER IN IT, N E T W O R K I N G A N D C Y B E R S E C U R I T Y S O L U T I O N S . R T H O N J U S T I N E G R E E N I N G R E C E N T LY C A U G H T U P WITH HIM TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY’S MISSION TO BRIDGE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE.

Fit for Purpose: Can you give us an insight into your role as CEO? We’re not a consumer brand but, if you’re a business, you’ll probably use some of our kit to keep connected. We have just over 3,000 members of staff in the UK, and as CEO, my job is to make sure that we have many happy customers and that we grow our business.

What does the digital divide mean to you?

We recently launched the Cisco Broadband Index, an EMEA-wide survey, to find how the digital divide manifests itself and the impact it has.

We received 2,000 responses from a range of different backgrounds, which gave us some interesting insights.

One thing we found was that more than half of the workers we interviewed are spending seven hours a day online - far more than pre-pandemic. We also found that nearly 70 per cent of UK workers believe that economic growth must be built on better internet access.

This really does speak to the heart of the challenge, because, while the data shows that 96 per cent of people across the UK have access to connectivity, actually only 60 per cent use the service.

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So that poses some questions. It’s one thing to have the potential access. But what about the affordability?

What about the quality of that service? What about the four per cent which equates to 2.7 million people, who don’t even have access. So, if those 2.7 million people do not have access, that means they’re not going to be able to participate in the economic growth and the economic recovery that we all need, and crave.

Why is connectivity important now more than ever?

Look at the [pandemic]. Connectivity has been everything; the only way to work, learn or socialise.

We know that some children were struggling to participate in online learning, either because they didn’t have devices, or they didn’t have access because of their home life.

One of the things that I’m particularly proud of is working with the Department for Education to deliver secure devices to children who needed additional support.

But adults, too, are affected. If their job involves working from home, and they don’t have the connectivity they need, it’s automatically shutting them out from a large proportion of the employment market.

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Tell us about Cisco’s pledge to positively impact one billion people by 2025 Our purpose is about building an inclusive future for all, and this is built into the fabric of our culture as a company.

It’s ingrained in what we do; and the reason why it’s so important is because we are one of very few organisations who can make a difference with what we do, by building the technology and helping to connect people.

For example, our Networking Academy is a global scheme that started over 20 years ago, partnering with learning institutions around the world. In the UK, we now have 300 of these academies operating today, and 500,000 [people] have gone through it since inception. So, it is making a real difference.

How do you build an inclusive future within the business itself?

It has to start from the top, and I’ll give you an example.

During the pandemic, one of the things that we tried to do at every level was to make sure that our employees felt connected.

In the early days, it was really a case of over-connecting, overcommunicating with our teams and making sure that they could [access] what we were doing to support them.

But also, during those sessions, we had our senior leaders and our CEO acknowledging some of the challenges that they were facing, because the situation was hard on all of us.

What principles does Cisco live and operate by?

We set six very clear guiding principles: give your best, give your ego the day off, give something of yourself, take accountability, take a bold step, and take difference to heart.

This last one means creating an environment where we can recognise the diversity that we have, and recognise where we don’t have enough, and taking steps to remedy that.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I think from a personal point of view, it would be to take a bit more risk. You know, things have worked out pretty well for me, I wouldn’t change anything. But if I knew, at the age of 21, what I know now, in terms of how things play out, I perhaps would have taken a little bit more risk - and I would have travelled.

And I suppose I’d also tell myself that everything’s going to turn out okay.

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Putting purpose into practice LEADING UK L AW FIRM SHOOSMITHS IS COMMITTED TO SUPPORTING SOCIAL MOBILIT Y FROM WITHIN A N D E X T E R N A L LY I N T H E W I D E R W O R L D . H E R E C H I E F E X E C U T I V E S I M O N BO S S U P DAT E S O N T H E ORGANISATION’S PROGRESS AS A PURPOSE-DRIVEN EMPLOYER.

Fit for Purpose: What does social mobility mean to Shoosmiths as a company?

What I often refer to as our beating heart, or the lifeblood of the firm in terms of values and culture, is the word authenticity.

People can come into our organisation and genuinely be themselves and aspire to whatever they want to do. As an organisation we’re pretty grounded, in terms of being normal people going about our day-to-day jobs, however difficult those may be on occasion. But it’s about doing it in our own way with a sense of fun, where we can enjoy each other’s company – and the whole journey inside and out. Looking back over the last 18 months or so, I’m pleased to say that social mobility and the challenge that sits with it continues to rise up our agenda. It is increasingly being appreciated and focused upon and I can’t think of another law firm that isn’t at least talking about this; and in many cases doing something about it.

What do you think is driving this wider recognition of the importance of social mobility in the legal sector?

Social mobility cuts into areas like diversity, inclusion, broader equality discussions and so on. So Black Lives Matter, the #metoo movement, climate change and COVID mean there have been a number of things going on around us that have caused organisations to stop and reflect on what they stand for, their values and what’s important to them. Corporate responsibility is not a new concept, but I think if you’d asked me three years ago what I understood about it, I probably would have struggled to

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answer in quite the same way as today. It really has shifted up the agenda. Also, we’ve seen leadership from government in terms of reporting requirements in some of these areas. We are all familiar with the gender pay gap, but voluntary reporting flowing from that on the ethnic pay gap, and also in relation to climate change, are welcomed too.

And is this also being driven by employees themselves. We’ve heard from other organisations that ESG is one of the first factors candidates ask about in interviews…

Absolutely, and it’s easy to understand why. Anyone coming into an organisation is making an investment; they are investing their time, effort, energy, future career and hopes. We all spend a reasonable amount of time at work, whether we’re sitting at home or in the office, so who wouldn’t want to work in an organisation that you really feel part of in every sense rather than a simple transaction between doing something to get paid for it. If you haven’t got good answers to these questions, then you may not attract the talent you really need, or retain it.

What are some of the challenges of becoming a more purposeful organisation?

This hasn’t been a quantum leap for us in terms of our value set.

It’s really been a natural build from our outlook on life. We’re not a traditional law firm in the sense that we haven’t traditionally recruited from Oxbridge or had a narrow recruitment policy around Russell Group universities. We have been quite diverse,

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more work to do. Our role, amongst all the other things we must do, is to ensure, in the interests of our profession, that we are seen as genuinely democratic. If you have the ability and desire, then nothing should hold you back, whether that’s the colour of your skin or what your mum and dad did.

What do you believe are the qualities of leadership needed to really drive social mobility forward?

The advice I would give from our own experience is that the voice has to come from the top - and it needs to be genuine.

Words are fine and certainly play a part, but it needs some sort of physical manifestation, some action on the ground in terms of getting involved in your business and with people outside your business. You also need resilience. If there are organisations out there who want to do more on this, I’m pretty sure the staff won’t push back against it. But like any initiative, you can’t talk about it a couple of times and think that the job is done, or just add something to the website that says you’re up for challenging social immobility. You’ve actually got to get on and do it and keep talking to people about it.

and this resonates with the people in our business. Clearly there is always more you can do, for example, in terms of storytelling and role models across the business, particularly at senior levels. At our recent partners’ conference, a number of partners told me about their journeys - and I’m not sure we’ve made the most of that in terms of sharing these stories.

We’ve always been good at this at the junior level, for example through an initiative called ‘In My Shoes’ where junior staff members talk to potential graduates about opportunities within the company. But I think there’s much more to do around storytelling at a senior level.

Perhaps in the past people have been reticent to talk about their own journey and background, but now it’s becoming an easier discussion? Is this a trend you can capitalise on in the name of social mobility?

I think the profession still carries around baggage in terms of elitism and being accessible to the few. There is a perception in certain areas of the country where there are lots of talented people who believe they could never be lawyers because they are not quite posh enough. This tells us that there is so much

We are increasingly seeing leaders from different sectors sharing ideas around ESG, including through the Purpose Coalition. How valuable have you found this in your own organisation?

It has been really powerful and hugely encouraging. We all sit in our own organisations dealing with opportunities and challenges that come to us every day and keep pushing things on. To share what we’ve done, but also listen to what others have done and get energy from it, is really good. This isn’t particularly sensitive stuff; it’s about coming together to try to tackle some of society’s problems and challenges. We are seeing barriers coming down between organisations that wouldn’t normally speak to each other. It’s about sharing, supporting engaging and encouraging, and I think this has been a really positive step.

What’s next for Shoosmiths in terms of being more purposeful in 2022?

We haven’t exactly fixed the problem yet so there is a load more to do. We would like to use data more and get a better sense of social mobility within the firm. There is work to be done in intervening and encouraging more people to share their own stories [and situations]. We also have a social mobility action plan which is broken down to each of our locations.

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In conversation with a legal sector changemaker T H E L E G A L P RO F E S S I O N H A S H I S T O R I C A L LY B E E N R E L AT I V E LY P O O R AT E M B R AC I N G S O C I A L M O B I L I T Y AND ENSURING OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN ARE ACCESSIBLE TO ALL.

This has changed in recent years, however, with firms like Simmons & Simmons leading the way in maximising their positive impact on challenged communities and individuals unfairly disadvantaged in pursuing a career in law.

Here Colin Passmore, Client Development Partner at the firm, talks to Rt Hon Justine Greening about the organisation’s approach to purpose.

Fit for Purpose: Tell us about your business in a nutshell We’re a London-headquartered, international law firm with around 1,000 lawyers and a presence in about 20 different countries. We are a commercial law firm and, as it happens, celebrated our 125th birthday recently.

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You spent 10 years as a senior partner of the firm, before moving into your current role. How have you seen the legal sector move forward as a profession during that time?

We are quite a conservative profession and, in some respects, don’t change quickly. One of the biggest changes I’ve seen over the last 25 years is the growth in scale and size of law firms. It wasn’t so long ago that the law said that a partnership was still a partnership and couldn’t be more than 20 people. We are a partnership with 300 and are by no means the biggest. We’ve become a lot more corporate and have to run ourselves like a business. You are a partner in the firm, and it has to be run as efficiently and swiftly as any major company, albeit taking into account the fact that lawyers are all part owners of the business. We are pretty good at some aspects of technology, but I think there’s a long way to go to really embrace all the changes coming down the track to be really innovative. But as a profession we are getting there, including in [embracing] the all-important topic of social mobility.

How are leadership teams in the legal sector approaching levelling up?

We don’t survive as a business without two essential ingredients; our own people, who do fantastically important work to support us and keep us going, and our clients. Without clients we have nothing to do, and we don’t survive. My firm, in common with many other firms, listens to our clients. There is phenomenal pressure on us to be the most diverse firm we possibly can be.

If we do not listen, watch, adjust and adapt in order to meet what our clients are saying, then they have so many other law

Does being more diverse also help you to recruit and keep the best talent?

Yes. There is a clamour for far greater diversity coming from people who apply to us to become trainee solicitors. But there is a massive difference between knowing that you have to do something to change, and actually effecting a change. This is a process that a lot of us are going through at the moment including our own firm.

Tell us more about your work on social mobility and widening opportunity Six years ago, we realised that our efforts to improve gender diversity for some reason weren’t working. It was disheartening to see really talented people leaving and it also represented wasted investment. We started a big programme in 2015 to address our gender balance. We did this by making it a leadership and business issue and it became something that was constantly talked about. We went out of our way to mentor female associates and to make it easier for female talent to stay and get to partnership level. We made a lot of progress on that front, but of course as you make progress in one area you realise you have problems in another. We also started to become much more aware that we had similar challenges around ethnic diversity. We started it to work on that, but then we realised there was a third diversity issue that we needed to address, which was social mobility. This has always been seen as a really, really difficult problem to solve. One of the challenges is that we may recruit anything up to 100 trainees per year, yet most of the bigger law firms like ours operating in or headquartered in London tend to get thousands of applications each year.

The process of sifting through them was one that just didn’t address the social mobility issue. As a result, a lot of people from universities that don’t traditionally supply trainee solicitors in vast numbers to the City, were being ignored.

What is the solution to these problems?

My view is that social mobility is a societal issue and one that a firm in one profession cannot fix. What works best is when a group of firms within the same profession get together and work together, rather than competing. We are all business

competitors, but in an area like this, the first step is to get a group of like-minded law firms and leaders together to see what we can do collectively. This is what the Levelling Up Law initiative is starting to do. It now has around 15 firms in it and has started to promote the idea that the profession and City firms can do so much more to promote social mobility.

Social mobility has always been problematic because, as a profession, we have tended to take the majority of our trainees from a traditional pool of universities. We are now getting to know the law faculties and heads of departments at universities where traditionally we have not taken trainees. Just as with many of our programmes with individual schools around London, this has shown us that there is a wealth of talent that we are missing.

While Levelling Up Law is not going to create more places at law firms, it is going to share out and give a much greater opportunity to people from all universities who apply to us. This is only going to work if we get to know these universities better and better and understand how they teach, what they teach and what the graduate expectations and capabilities are. In turn we can ensure that we give them an appropriate welcome when they apply to us and hopefully when we start to take some of them on.

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firms to choose from and will go elsewhere. We have to be more diverse, but just as importantly, it is also the right thing to be more diverse. It is a well-known truth that the more diverse you are as a business, the better business you are because you have a much greater range of viewpoints.

And this supportive welcome must surely continue throughout the trainee’s journey through the firm to enable them to fulfil their potential?

Yes. It’s easy to think that when you’ve recruited someone, it’s job done. The people of my vintage are learning that this is only half the battle. You then have to realise that some of the new generation coming in have a different outlook. This wonderful, brilliant, conservative profession has to start to match the society in which it operates. We embrace diversity in all its manifestations, but we have to go further, not just recruiting, but adapting and learning. We have to learn from new people coming in.

Has the pandemic’s impact on working practices made staff support and development more challenging?

I am a passionate believer in human interaction, because this is how you get to know people, look them in the eye and see what they really think and believe. You can’t pick up social nuances on Zoom or Teams. How do you teach someone or help their progression as they become more and more senior, if you’re not seeing them? In terms of levelling up, I would love to go and interact with undergraduates at a law faculty and talk to them in person. Of course, I can talk to them over Zoom, but I’d rather be in a room with them to help them see what the City lawyer looks like. I think the benefit of this is being lost.

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“We’re reinventing what banking means in this new economy” VIRGIN MONEY’S PURPOSE IS TO “MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER ABOUT MONEY”.

As well as shaping its products and services, this mantra drives the organisation’s approach to its people and levelling up, as Syreeta Brown, Chief People and Communications Officer, explains.

Fit for Purpose: Your mission as a company really gets to the heart of people’s relationship with money. How does this enable you to be purposeful?

It’s an oxymoron, in that people hear money and they think happiness. Maybe the top five per cent of people in the economic structure are happy, but generally, when it comes to money, it’s a challenging topic for people as it affects their lives. We think of money in different ways – you earn it, spend it and have to monitor it in terms of bills and outgoings, so it’s a serious business. We are trying to close the gap to people seeing it as something that can make their life better, by understanding the full spectrum of how to manage it. We are trying to reinvent what banking means in this new economy, as people and society become more values-driven.

You’re confronting the anxieties that people have around money, but also reminding them of the opportunities that money can unlock. This seems like a relatively new direction for financial services.

Yes, I’ve been in banking now for over 12 years and since joining Virgin Money I’ve had to completely re-educate myself about exactly what we’re talking about, understanding how money works, and then how it can work for customers. We’ve had to think how

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we, as an organisation, can bring this to life. It’s the classic HR strategy dilemma; if you separate your people strategy from your business strategy, you’re not always able to bring in the right people that can help you to deliver the business outcomes or your purpose. We are trying to replicate [internally] the very experience we want to give our customers. We have to make sure there’s a strong alignment between the way you want to deliver your business and the way you manage your people. An example of this would be flexible working.

Tell us more about your evolving relationship with remote working and how it supports your levelling up work When challenges come into your personal life, or wider society, there’s always something to learn. We’ve learned in the last couple of years that you can change the way things are done and still be productive. In the pandemic, we had to rethink how we can get work done, look after our colleagues and customers and keep the bank running. It was an acceleration of work already underway, leveraging digital technologies and fostering working patterns that are more people, rather than organisation, driven. People can be based, depending on roles and operational requirements, anywhere in the UK. We are allowing colleagues with their managers and teams to establish team rhythms as part of that process. They can then decide how they want to work in line with their team requirements. Our people can interact virtually and we have also set up our existing office spaces to be designed as hubs for people to connect. We’re trying to make sure that, with flexibility, we provide environments for people to also engage and collaborate.

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In terms of levelling up, how do you think these changing approaches tie in with providing opportunities for more people over time?

There are many challenges organisations are facing when it comes to making sure you have the right skills when you need them, and having a strong inclusive culture. Also, making sure people are not excluded because of where they may live in the UK. With this approach we are now committing to, we’re opening up opportunity, not closing it down. This is the first step to addressing some of those really hard agendas like diversity and inclusion in their broadest sense. We no longer talk about location and we’re starting to get a pipeline of people for some opportunities that may not have thought of Virgin Money in terms of the locations it has typically operated from and so we are increasing our reach.

This is resonating, not just with Virgin Money colleagues, but also externally. Also, at a very challenging time, this helps with people’s physical and mental wellbeing. Simple things, like being able to walk the dog in the morning, which they may not have been able to do when they were commuting, are really helpful.

But we have also made sure that people understand that they can leverage the benefits of our hubs and connect via a booking app. We’re making it easy for people to connect and advising managers and leaders of teams to think about their engagement strategy as a team.

How does flexible working and being more remote affect younger people in their career development?

We’ve actually launched programmes focusing on this, helping young people to develop their career in a flexible environment.

If you are more experienced, you may not need to feel the in-person benefit of exchanging ideas with colleagues. If you’re just entering into the workforce it might be really beneficial. It has taken a lot of work for us to de-layer and deconstruct all possible scenarios in order to make sure we’re doing things for everybody. Flexible working is great, but a big part of our agenda here is also to make sure that it is harmonised with our legacy constructs and individuals preferred ways of working.

Does looking after your people go hand in hand with looking after your customers, enabling you to be more successful as a result?

We look at our customers and colleagues through the same lens. If you’re making your people happy, you are definitely making your customers happy because they are [the same]

thing in a sense. They are the people we want to attract and promote our services to. It’s a great signal if you’re getting it right internally that you are going to get it right externally because people will identify with that. Increasingly, we are seeing people select organisations with values and purpose in mind. From an ESG perspective, they are watching what organisations do, not just what they say. These types of agendas have to be underpinned, they cannot be a label or a pet project or initiative. Leadership has to play its part in supporting and committing, and it’s a big journey to embed it. When you’ve embedded it, you’re not really talking about it anymore, you’re just doing it, and it’s just how life is.

We’ve got a way to go, but I do think we’ve set ourselves up.

It’s also important that purpose is not just floating, but that it has real structure around it. [We have] a purpose council and an executive board member who sits on that, along with other people. We also have a purpose posse, which does all sorts of activities to make sure we understand the work we do to reflect our purpose and enforce it. It is good business strategy to set an intent and then go at it at every layer of your organisation, making sure there’s a systematic reflection of that intent upstream and downstream.

How does being part of a strictly regulated financial services sector affect your ability to drive purpose throughout the organisation?

Financial services are in a regulatory environment and our DNA is to be very risk oriented. But in the market we are moving in now, and how it is developing, you have to make sure you instill accountability and responsibility at every level of your organisation. I need a chief risk officer to be just as focused as a store person. If people feel empowered, they take responsibility more. There are some roles that can’t be remote, obviously. The important thing is that everybody understands it. I was talking to a store colleague the other day who had such a passion about A Life More Virgin. Even though she has to do a certain role in an office environment in the store, she said it’s opened up so much opportunity for her to be a better mum. She talked me through how she has been able to manage with her two young children, and how, when they get to a certain age, she will look at further developing her career. I thought this was an amazing story to show that it’s not just about being in the office or not in the office, it’s about helping people to manage their personal lives and goals.

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Remapping the route into the legal profession WEIGHTMANS L AW FIRM IS HARNESSING APPRENTICESHIPS TO DRIVE SOCIAL MOBILIT Y AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE WIDER LEVELLING UP AGENDA. CHARLES HEPPENSTALL, MANAGING PARTNER OF THE ORGANISATION’S LEEDS OFFICE, EXPL AINS MORE IN CONVERSATION WITH FIT FOR PURPOSE. Fit for Purpose: What does levelling up mean to your organisation?

CH: On the leadership side, it’s all about opening the doors, and making it clear to the outside world and the market generally that we are a progressive and inclusive firm. Also, that we [don’t give] the perception that the law is a white, old-boys club, which is no longer the case. We need to make sure that we open doors to those who wouldn’t necessarily have pursued a career in the law because of their perceptions that they wouldn’t fit into this environment, or imposter syndrome. That is something we need to torpedo as soon as possible and get that perception out of the window so people can see themselves working in law and to see that it will be a place for them that they are included in.

Tell us about your academy and how you use apprenticeships to support levelling up The whole levelling up piece is about trying to include people who wouldn’t ordinarily become lawyers. The old pathway, traditionally, was to get a university degree, either getting an LLB [qualifying

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law degree] and then moving onto training, or converting as I did, before going on to become a lawyer. That’s the pathway that was set. But doing it the other way, through the Apprenticeship Academy, and also separately on the paralegal pathway, is pushing back on that; and opening doors to those who wouldn’t ordinarily have got the degrees that the old guard did. It’s an alternative route into the profession which has been extremely popular and it’s delivering opportunities to those who wouldn’t ordinarily have had them.

You’ve been offering the apprenticeship route since 2013, so it clearly works for Weightmans as a business too?

It’s tried and tested. It’s a six-year course and is popular with apprentices who are very vocal in their praise of the course and how it works. Ordinarily, they would do four days in department, finding out what the job entails, learning the ropes and getting familiar with the clients and the work itself.

Then they would do one day of virtual remote training with the BPP University. By the time they finish the six years, they know exactly what the job entails and what skills they need, and they have the experience to put those skills into practice.

It does produce very well-rounded lawyers at the end of the procedure.

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It’s all about opening the doors, and making it clear to the outside world that we are a progressive and inclusive firm.

Learning on the job, while also gaining that technical expertise, does seem to have its benefits over the traditional route, where you gain your degree and then have to start from square one on the career path.

Absolutely. The way I did it myself was very bookish. There was the Legal Practice Course, which [covered] the practical side, but up to that point, it was all very much about theory and that was as far as it went. This way you are doing work experience hand in hand with the with the pure law, so it’s very much a better way of doing it.

Has it been challenging as an organisation to incorporate this apprenticeship model?

No, it’s been relatively straightforward. It’s almost as if we have paralegals who are doing the studying as well on the fifth day of the working week. It’s kind of the same approach that we would have anyway to our more junior, non-qualified staff but one day they wake up and they’ve got their degree and they’re qualified.

So, in terms of the practical nuts and bolts, there’s not an awful lot of difference.

Do you think the apprenticeship route into law will become more common in future?

I think it will become more popular. In terms of levelling up, not everyone can afford to go to university for three years and get their qualifications. Those who can’t, can still pursue a legal career this way. It’s those social groups who can’t afford to go down the traditional path that find themselves struggling to get in, and this is one of the ways to do it. There are other routes available, but I think this is certainly proving to be effective in breaking through that bubble.

Are you able to connect up these pathways into the profession with those communities in danger of being left behind, where opportunities are otherwise limited?

Yes. As an example, we are a member of the Leeds Community Foundation, a charitable organisation that reaches out to those less advantaged. In that way we are being exposed to, or getting leads to, those people who need that helping hand. If we are able to, we offer these routes into law to people who have the ambition and drive you need to become a lawyer. Being conscious of the world around you and the community that you’re part of, is essential.

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Bridging the digital divide is essential for levelling up all our communities THE PANDEMIC HAS SHOWN THAT TACKLING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE SHOULD NOT JUST BE AN ITEM ON A WISH LIST FOR THE FUTURE. IT IS AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPERATIVE THAT C AN EMPOWER PEOPLE TO DO THE JOBS THEY WANT WHILE REMAINING ROOTED IN THE COMMUNITIES IN WHICH THEY WANT TO LIVE.

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COVID-19 highlighted the stark inequality between those businesses and individuals who have access to fast broadband, who have the skills and confidence as well as the equipment to make the most of the opportunities that digital connectivity presents, and those who do not.

The gap is still particularly marked in rural areas compared to cities, although not always confined to them. Towns too have in the past lagged behind cities in reliability and speed of connections. But we have to level up the whole country on connectivity or we will lack the capacity to deliver the high wage, high skilled economy in every part of the UK that the Government has pledged to create, especially in growing sectors like tech and the creative industries. This better connectivity outside the major cities is surely key to enabling companies to develop workforces and drive growth beyond the usual economic hotspots. On a macro level, getting all parts of the UK properly connected is critical for a new, green economy. And it could give more individuals the chance to live where they choose rather than being part of a brain drain to big cities.

On an individual level, too many adults still lack the devices and skills to allow them to participate in a digital society. Supporting a family’s online learning, arranging health appointments, applying for jobs or managing finances all become hugely challenging tasks if they’re not online and they can experience social isolation and anxiety as a result. The digital divide that has affected children’s education is well-documented and profound, placing them many learning hours behind their better-off contemporaries.

In amongst recent announcements, there was an important commitment by the Government to give more than half a million more rural homes and businesses access to better broadband through the £5 billion scheme, Project Gigabit. It will enable people to start and run businesses online from anywhere in the UK. Aimed at hard-to-reach areas like Dorset, Herefordshire and North Yorkshire, it follows the announcement of the first phase earlier this year which included Northumberland and Cornwall and Cumbria, the county I call home. It is a good start but the Government needs to maintain the momentum on rolling out improvements to these communities. I know from my time as an MP representing the Furness area in south Cumbria how slow and hard fought the progress has been so far.

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Getting all parts of the UK properly connected is critical for a new, green economy

Many of the businesses that have partnered with the Purpose Coalition to help level up the country are already working hard to close the digital divide. The Levelling Up Goals provide a common architecture for them to share their knowledge and experiences as they seek to break down the barriers that stop individuals and communities having equal access to opportunity. Goal 10 addresses the digital divide specifically, focusing on closing the gap in technology access, skills, opportunities and infrastructure.

Cisco, a worldwide leader in the technology that powers the internet, has agreed to act as the Commissioner for Goal 10.

Almost every internet connection in the UK touches Cisco technology and so it is well placed to make a difference in some of our least privileged communities. With an ambition to ensure that technology changes lives for the better, it invests in projects across the country that support innovation, including smart cities, transport, healthcare, manufacturing and digital skills.

Its Networking Academy helps people of all ages to improve their digital skills and fulfil their potential. It particularly targets marginalised groups such as the homeless who are almost always digitally excluded and furthest away from a level playing field.

Closing the digital divide makes good business sense if the country is to deliver the right expertise and skills for a 21st century economy. It is also crucial if we are to have equality in society where everyone with the potential, no matter what their background is or where they are from, can take advantage of the opportunities that a digitally connected economy will create.

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GB Railfreight signs up to Levelling Up Goals GB RAILFREIGHT (GBRF), A MAJOR UK RAIL FREIGHT O P E R A T O R , R E C E N T LY A N N O U N C E D I T S P A R T N E R S H I P WITH THE PURPOSE COALITION ON A LEVELLING UP ACTION PL AN WHICH WILL SET OUT ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEVELLING UP AGENDA IN THE UK. GBRf is one of the fastest growing companies in the railway sector, transporting goods for a wide range of customers across the country. With a workforce totalling more than 1,000 staff, GBRf pride themselves on five core principles: communication and visibility, professionalism, trust and empowerment, enjoyment, and support. These underpin its mission to provide a reliable, safe, and sustainable portfolio of rail freight services for customers. The Levelling Up Action Plan will highlight the work GBRf is already undertaking to deliver a positive impact on communities across the country within the architecture of the Purpose Goals, known as the Levelling Up Goals in the UK. Its CEO, John Smith, will join as a Levelling Up Commissioner for Goal 11 Infrastructure for Opportunity and the company will be the industry lead for the transport sector.

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John Smith, CEO of GB Railfreight, said: “At GBRf, we are committed to fostering the next generation of rail freight talent across local and regional communities.

By partnering with the Purpose Coalition, we will build towards a brighter future for rail freight and the wider transport industry.

The Goals, established this year by former Education Secretary Rt Hon Justine Greening with input from businesses, universities and policymakers, are designed to provide a framework which will help tackle the challenges the country faces post Covid-19.

They focus on key life stages - from early years through to adulthood, alongside other barriers such as fair career progression and good health and wellbeing - and highlight the main issues that need to be resolved to create a level playing field for everyone.

The Goals are the first major piece of work by the Purpose Coalition, which includes some of the UK’s most purpose-led businesses, universities and public sector organisations, such as Amazon, bp, Gateley, Cisco, the BBC, UK Power Networks, Barts Health NHS Trust, the University of Bradford and many others.

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We are committed to fostering the next generation of rail freight talent across local and regional communities.

“Rail freight delivers economic and social benefits valued at £2.5 billion to the UK annually. This continued growth can only be sustained by breaking down the barriers to a career in rail and developing a future workforce with the necessary skills needed to meet this country’s needs.

“Our work to provide people with the essential skills and knowledge for a successful career in rail freight has already started at our new Peterborough headquarters, one of the single largest investments we have made to this date. We look forward to advancing our efforts with a Levelling Up Action Plan to achieve this goal nationwide and create a level playing field for anyone looking for a career in this thriving industry.”

Justine Greening added: “An efficient transport system is key to connecting people and places and maintaining the infrastructure that is vital for opportunity. For those communities which have few opportunities on their doorstep, it is even more important that people can access them easily.

“The rail freight industry has been crucial in keeping food and medical supplies moving during the pandemic and it will continue to have a huge role to play as we work towards the decarbonisation of transport and reaching net zero by 2050.

Getting freight off our roads and onto our rail system will pay huge dividends for our emissions targets.

“GB Railfreight has shown its willingness to help shape the industry’s future. Its significant investment in a new state-ofthe-art HQ in Peterborough demonstrates its commitment to becoming the industry’s leading training provider, with a particular focus on developing the skills needed for the train drivers and managers of the future. The launch of its new service from the Port of Tyne to Yorkshire and the Midlands will help level up the area it serves while also alleviating the pressure on our supply chains.

“The Purpose Coalition is proud to be soon launching GB Railfreight’s Levelling Up Action Plan, with John Smith taking a leadership role in the Coalition as a Commissioner, to drive levelling up in the transport industry across the country and close the opportunity gap.”

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Proud to partner on the Levelling Up Goals

Seema Kennedy OBE, John Boumphrey UK & Ireland Country Manager, Rt Hon Justine Greening

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