Research
CLES research priorities for 2010/2011
CLES undertakes independent research in collaboration with CLES members, partners and associates. We also work closely with many organisations through our trading arm CLES Consulting. If you are interested in taking part in or sponsoring our research, please contact the CLES policy team for more information.
Changing direction, changing delivery
CLES have been advising and supporting local authorities with their regeneration and economic development projects for the last 20 years and much progress has been made in our communities, but there is still work to be done and new challenges to tackle. We’d like to work with our members and consultancy clients to explore how economic development can change and adapt to the new challenges, including:
- fewer resources and capacity
- An ageing labour market
- Threat of climate change
- Globalisation
- Long term unemployment and worklessness
A key outcome of this work will be the development of new ideas for economic delivery which make the most of the opportunities in the future and which draw upon UK and international good practice. CLES is currently working with the Norfolk Charitable Trust on a piece of international research on planned communities. For more information on this piece of work please click here.
Place resilience
We shall be continuing to develop our ideas on place resilience based on the partnership research we have developed with local authorities during 2010 and our place resilience model. You can read more about our work on resilience here. We shall be undertaking research on place resilience with a new set of local authorities for 2010/11 and hope to further understand the characteristics of place resilience and how we can use this research to rebalance our local economies and prioritise resources in a time of austerity
Social economy
CLES and CLES Consulting have been working with localities across the UK on the CLES place resilience research project and one of the key findings from this work has been that there is a poor understanding of the role that the social economy plays in supporting local economic vitality. We shall be exploring the characteristics of the social economy, and how we strengthen this in the future, including links to 'Big society'.
Poverty and social exclusion
An ongoing theme of CLES’ research and our charitable purpose is a strong focus on understanding and combating poverty and social exclusion. In 2010, we are using the future city game to understand issue of poverty and social eclusion in the South West as part of the 2010 European Year for combating poverty and social exclusion. Click here for more information.
Understanding local economies
CLES have expertise in the use of innovative tools which help us understand more about how local economies operate at a variety of scales (including regional and neighbourhood level). These include our procurement work using LM3 (Local Multiplier model) and social network analysis (SNA). We’ll be continuing to undertake research using these tools in partnership with the University of Manchester. We are also continuing to work with the British Council to play our Future City Game in the South West of England as part of the 2010 European year for combating poverty and social exclusion. We have also set up a network for ongoing discussion and debate on economic assessment but also on other key topical issues. This provides a chance for people to meet informally and talk about how policy is impacting on their work. Click here for more information on the Local Economic Assessment Network.
Policy watch
At CLES we are constantly analysing new policy from government so we can help local government understand what it means for economic development and regeneration. We publish our thoughts and idea on our blogs and our monthly bulletins which we circulate to our members and network. We also use our research, our work with consultancy clients and our discussions with members and the wider network to influence government policy both nationally and locally.
For more information on our policy research, please contact Sarah Longlands, Director of Policy on sarahlonglands@cles.org.uk
