Projects

Brighton & Hove City council sought to develop a new Economic Strategy to guide their activity between 2024-2027.

It was important for Brighton & Hove City Council that the Economic Strategy was shaped in partnership with businesses and organisations across the city, who will help deliver any actions. They were also keen that in process of developing the strategy itself new relationships were established.

PRD took a collaborative approach which sought input from stakeholders from the start of the process. This involved a series of themed workshops with council officers, civil society organisations and businesses. Our conversations were broader than what might be included in a traditional economic strategy, for example bringing in representatives from public health, culture and circular economy, recognising the links between these and the economy of the city.

Alongside this, we developed a short evidence base shaped around how Brighton & Hove’s economy could be more fair, green and productive. This situated Brighton & Hove’s economy within wider national economic challenges and opportunities.

Our outputs are still being developed, but include a short visual evidence base and a strategy report.

Folkestone and Hythe District Council commissioned a multidisciplinary team, which included PRD, to develop a Place Plan for Folkestone town centre—a critical exercise to define the future role of the town centre following a year of Covid-19 related lockdowns and ongoing challenges facing the high street.

The Place Plan addresses themes such as public realm, employment, skills and training, investment, and transport. PRD developed the socioeconomic evidence base for the Place Plan as well as recommendations to enable business growth, economic development and long-term community participation.

Guided by the views of local people, the project team developed a ‘mission-driven’ approach with six missions to structure the actions of the Place Plan and galvanise external investors around shared goals. PRD helped develop these missions and identified specific outputs and outcomes against each one to enable the council to measure success and progress.

The Place Plan provides the council with a robust evidence base upon which to bid for central government regeneration funding and the ‘mission-driven’ approach has allowed external partners to see both what the council is doing and where their own investments can make contributions to the aims of the Place Plan.

The Mayor of London’s Social Integration Strategy recognises the importance of better evidence of what social integration means and how to measure it. Working with the Greater London Authority, PRD prepared guidance and tools for organisations to use when seeking to understand and measure social integration in places and projects

The Social Integration Toolkit is a world leader in city-specific integration measurement. It helps track specific impacts of policies and projects, improving planning and leading to better initiatives to support Londoners. It aims to help establish a better understanding of the circumstances of individuals and communities by focusing on three core themes: relationships, participation, and equality.

PRD is currently working with several clients to implement the toolkit on their own projects.

Our work on the toolkit builds on previous support PRD team members have provided to the GLA in developing measurement frameworks, such as the Good Growth Monitoring and  Evaluation Framework.

Download the Social Integration Toolkit

We worked with Gravesham Borough Council to help direct the council’s regeneration vision up to 2040. This involved the production of an up to date social, economic and environmental evidence base to demonstrate intra-borough inequalities, particularly around health and wellbeing.

Using evidence of challenges facing local communities, we worked with officers at the council across housing, open spaces, regeneration and economic development to develop the outcomes they wish to achieve as council-wide ambitions. This Theory of Change process allowed the council to think more holistically about the roadmap to delivering change for the borough’s residents and businesses, and the outcomes of the exercise will inform the council’s future regeneration strategy and case-making over the coming decades.

Ealing is vital to London’s economy. The borough contains around 8% of the city’s designated industrial floorspace, which includes important activity ranging from high-tech manufacturing to logistics. Demand for industrial space has reached unprecedented levels. Ealing wanted to harness this to deliver maximum benefits for its residents.

Together with We Made That, PRD undertook two pieces of research: an Inclusive Economy baseline and an Industrial Workspace Audit. The process brought together a broad range of evidence to enable officers and politicians to think differently about the borough’s socioeconomic performance. This showed that despite perceptions of affluence, Ealing has a range of deeply embedded challenges, ranging from rising in-work poverty to a severe and disproportionate COVID-19 impact.

Industrious Ealing also evidenced significant market failures in the borough’s industrial land market that cannot be addressed through planning policy alone. Our recommendations proposed a coordinated and proactive response to these challenges encompassing the wider policy levers available to the council. Industrious Ealing will enable the borough to maximise and intensify its supply of industrial land whilst also addressing key social, economic, and environmental challenges.

PRD has an ongoing relationship with LB Newham across several workstreams. For example, we developed a comprehensive evidence base for the council’s inclusive economy strategy, which is formed around community wealth building principles. Community wealth building is an economic development approach that redirects wealth and the gains of economic growth back to local neighbourhoods and people.

In response to Covid-19, throughout which Newham’s residents were among the hardest-hit in the country, the council commissioned PRD to expand the strategy to a wider recovery and reorientation plan, which has formed the basis of the borough’s new Corporate Plan.

We have also undertaken research on the impacts of Covid-19 throughout Newham, supported development of a new affordable workspace programme, delivered data training for officers, established a measurement framework for the Corporate Plan and other strategies, and provided socioeconomic data to support masterplanning in areas including Stratford, Canning Town, and Custom House.

PRD developed an economic strategy and action plan built on an evidence base and commitments from council partners to help embed and deliver the strategy. The work began with a highly visual evidence base structured around three topics:

• Economy & people: Who is in the economy and what they are doing? (e.g. sector growth/change, resident qualifications, working from home, commercial floorspace, travel to/from Lewisham for work, younger and older population projections, economic inactivity)
• Economy & planet: How does the economy affect the planet and vice versa? (e.g. emissions hotspots, commercial stock energy performance ratings, air quality, carbon-intensive jobs, just transition, waste production and processing)
• Economy & prosperity: What do people get out of the economy? (e.g. worker and resident job quality and pay, claimants, access to town centres/amenities, access to public transport)

For each theme, we considered borough-wide data, but reviewed more granular information wherever possible to understand differences across neighbourhoods and whether any specific places would benefit from targeted actions in the strategy.

To cater to stakeholders’ differing levels of time and data confidence, we produced three variants of the evidence base: a traditional PDF of the complete evidence base, with maps, graphs, tables, and our written commentary; a shorter video version with a staff member talking through headline findings via maps and graphs; and a shorter still three-page PDF focusing on just the headline findings per theme and follow-on considerations for the strategy.

We also developed a set of themes and target geographical areas to give structure to the strategy, based on baseline findings and the council’s own economic ambitions: enterprise and creativity, opportunities for young people, decarbonisation, and prosperity—all under a banner of inclusive economy.

An engagement phase followed the baseline work, in which we held three roundtable discussions with the council and its Local Strategic Partnership to test the strategy themes, develop a vision, and learn how LSP members may be able to support the strategy through their own operations.

The action plan draws on economy-related actions from other Lewisham Council policies and incorporates new actions for the council and LSP to implement together. The strategy focuses on actions that council and LSP members can directly deliver or influence, such as through their services and contracts. However, recognising that some of the most critical challenges are outside of council control (e.g. pressing need for funding for commercial stock retrofit), we also included practical actions around partnerships and lobbying to bring forward change.

In 2020, PRD and project partners We Made That worked with Thanet District Council and the Margate Town Deal Board to develop a Town Investment Plan underpinned by extensive community engagement and a widespread desire to transform Margate into a town with a strong year-round economy.

The TIP charts a 10-year course of improvements for Margate, focusing on scaling Margate’s creative economy and skills through a new Creative Land Trust; tackling deep health inequalities by providing more wellbeing amenities linked to Margate’s coast; improving public realm and connectivity; and making Margate’s nationally-renowned heritage assets more sustainable and inclusive. It is underpinned by PRD’s extensive socioeconomic baseline to ensure interventions are targeted in areas that need them most.

PRD subsequently worked with partners to lay the groundwork for the Margate Creative Land Trust (MCLT), which now has a fully operational Board of Trustees. MCLT’s purpose is to safeguard sites for creative industries, mainly through purchasing property and taking headleases with a view to subletting at discounted rates. To assist MCLT with this process, we designed a property acquisition decision framework for MCLT to assess the suitability of potential properties for their portfolio. The framework sets out how MCLT can collect and analyse information on available sites, taking into account factors such as site size, price, condition and refurbishment needs, potential number of jobs, businesses, or creative activities it can support, and the extent to which the property’s end use can align with MCLT’s vision and aims.

Frome is a thriving market town in northeast Somerset. Steeped in history, the town is home to a wealth of cultural, natural, and economic assets. Frome has a strong economic identity and is well known for its independent retail, manufacturing heritage, and creative industries.

Saxonvale is the last major development site in Frome town centre. Mendip District council purchased the site in 2018 with the aim of turning an underused part of the town into a new mixed-use community. However, the council’s original proposal sought to maximise housing, with less focus on civic and economic infrastructure. Believing that a better alternative is possible, Mayday Saxonvale has prepared an alternative masterplan for the site. Mayday Saxonvale is a not-for-profit social enterprise incorporated as a company limited by guarantee with the sole objective of developing the Saxonvale site for the social, community, and economic benefit of Frome. Mayday’s alternative approach takes a community-led, balanced approach to development at Saxonvale, marrying the homes that Frome needs with the community and commercial space integral to prosperous and sustainable place.

To support Mayday’s alternative planning application, PRD produced an Economic Manifesto for the Saxonvale site. Setting out a clear case for change, the Manifesto proposed interventions to embed a new approach to the economy, enabling Frome to become greener, fairer, and more resilient by design. The Manifesto is underpinned by national and international best practice case studies, embedding a more inclusive economy approach from the outset.

The Manifesto has supported Mayday’s alternative planning application for the site and has been endorsed by a range of local partners including Frome Town Council.

LB Southwark commissioned PRD to develop an economic evidence base for the borough as the first step towards establishing a new economic strategy. The evidence base centres on three core themes and the issues that cut across them:

• How fair is Southwark’s economy? (e.g. access to jobs, amenities, and services; income inequality; opportunities for young people)
• How green is Southwark’s economy? (e.g. economy-related emissions; green jobs; implications and equity of green growth)
• How resilient is Southwark’s economy? (e.g. resilience of sectors, residents, workers; climate resilience)

With a strong focus on issues of equity and addressing inequality, the evidence base uses a mix of ‘traditional’ ONS social and economic indicators (e.g. sector breakdowns, jobs and business growth, income) and non-governmental data that provides more nuance on inequality and communities, such as information from the Urban Health Index, Trust for London, Consumer Data Research Centre, Civic Strength Index, and emerging research on low carbon goods and services activities. To understand the spatial aspects of inequality across the borough, the evidence base uses numerous maps, which tend to highlight central Southwark as an area where inequality is particularly embedded and deep.

Alongside highly visual data analysis, we provided a series of decision points and considerations for each theme, intended to prompt LB Southwark on which approaches or focus areas may be most suitable for the new economic strategy.

UN_BIASED was an exciting and innovative research and engagement project looking to produce actionable recommendations to move towards a truly inclusive economy, with a focus on women’s employment and opportunities. Central District Alliance Business Improvement District, a Central London BID with more than 160,000 employees and 17,000 businesses, including multi-national organisations, in partnership with the London Communication Agency (LCA), commissioned PRD and our collaborators to deliver a programme of desktop research and engagement to shape this project.  ​

Fundamental to the success of UN_BIASED was a foundation in robust quantitative and qualitative research that can enable an understanding of the issues, challenges, and barriers to change. This sits alongside insights from local employees and employers, and learning from best practice around the world, to identify realistic actions that will deliver an inclusive economy. ​

Our work included taking over a local coffee shop for a drop in a chat session, pop up engagement at careers fairs, focus groups, stakeholder interviews and surveys. We also hosted a co-design workshop to create recommendations for the future. Our processes ensured the voices of people working in Central London played a role in designing recommendations for change.

More information about the project is available on the UN_BIASED website and the report can be downloaded here.