Measuring success beyond growth
Senior Reseacher, Sean Benstead, reflects on work we have been doing in Oldham, to help the Council there understand how local interventions can deliver on their plan for place.
Since the start of this year, my CLES colleagues and I have been working with Oldham Council and the Oldham Economic Review Board to develop a framework to assess interventions related to Oldham’s Place Plan 2030 and it’s Independent Economic Review. These interventions span themes relating to skills and employment, civic pride, business and innovation, transport and housing.
“look beyond traditional metrics”
As the Oldham Place Plan strives to achieve broader positive life outcomes for residents through good and sustainable economic activity, the framework has been designed to look beyond traditional metrics for economic success. It operates as a live dashboard, with baseline analysis and SMART targets, which crystalise focus and supports the prioritisation of interventions in target areas.
Alongside the framework, we have also worked with Oldham to develop an additional multi criteria assessment tool, which seeks to prompt and guide decision making when it comes to project delivery. When projects are proposed their likely impact is assessed against target economic outcomes laid out in the framework, allowing for multiple projects to be compared. Alternatively, individual projects can be assessed in terms of whether they will reach a minimum set of target outcomes. The tool acts as a “gateway check” point for impact to be assessed before projects are taken forward, as in the example below:
“a disconnect between economic growth and good outcomes”
But why is a framework of this kind necessary? In recent decades there has been a disconnect between economic growth and good outcomes for people. GDP in the UK has roughly doubled since 1980 and the number of billionaires and total amount of wealth they hold has also doubled since 2010. Yet we have also seen wages stagnate and fall in real terms, increasing rates of in-work poverty and poor health outcomes. Clearly, the proceeds and benefits of economic growth are not being felt by everyone.
“think creatively”
And we can see this on the ground in our places. In Oldham, inequalities have increased beyond regional and national levels across multiple indicators in recent years – much of this a result of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, austerity and the Covid-19 pandemic. As a post-industrial borough on the edge of Greater Manchester, there is also a lack of public and private investment to revitalise an economy that has lost much of its industrial base over the past few decades. This means that Oldham, like many places around the UK, must think creatively about how to get the best possible outcomes from the tools they have at their disposal or, in this case, the interventions they have planned. The economic outcomes framework and project prioritisation tool aims to guide that creative thinking to ensure that only the most impactful get implemented.
“create the conditions”
Dave Benstead, Chair of the Oldham Economic Review Board highlighted the importance of the framework, saying “within Oldham we are seeking to transition away from traditional economic models and work as a system to create the conditions that enable all our residents, communities and businesses to benefit from good and sustainable growth.” He went on, “our work with CLES has been invaluable in respect of establishing an outcomes framework aligned to our four growth pillars, (People, Planet, Prosperity and Place). The framework helps us to chart our journey from where we are now to where we strive to be as a place by 2030. Underpinning this is the prioritisation framework which will help to give us the assurance that our limited collective resources are aligned to activity which directly contributes to those outcomes.”
“the challenge lies not in creating wealth”
With the Labour government’s primary mission to kickstart and deliver economic growth, while positioning local places as key players in realising that mission through the development of local growth plans, there is a new opportunity for local leaders to go beyond thinking about growth as solely a measure of aggregate GVA. Local growth plans can seek to include a broader set of objectives and indicators which would enable a prioritisation of interventions to address such as income and health inequalities, that traditional approaches can obfuscate or even exacerbate. Indeed, while Labour seeks to be seen as the party of wealth creation, the challenge lies not in creating wealth—since the UK already possesses abundant wealth—but in addressing where that wealth is held.
We know that there are places out there that, like Oldham, want to seize the opportunity of a renewed focus on local economic outcomes to develop bespoke and place-specific frameworks and tools to aid in their endeavours. If that’s you, then get in touch, we’d love to know about what you need to measure and why.
