Community Wealth Building in Leeds
Anchor institution collaboration to build a more inclusive local economy
CLES have worked with Nicky Denison, Wordfern, Les Newby Associates and Leeds City Council and its participating anchor institutions to develop an anchor institution network. The network is made up of 11 of the city’s largest public sector organisations. Read an overview of Leeds Anchors here.
Using spending on goods and services to generate local social and economic benefit
With combined procurement budgets of £2bn, the network is a significant economic agent in the Leeds economy. Having worked with CLES to analyse current spending, the network has now agreed objectives to shift spending towards suppliers who generate greater economic and social benefit for local people. Members are now working together to adapt their procurement practice and identify sectors where they can collaborate to create more economically generative local markets.
Targeting recruitment to enable a just labour market
Ten of the anchor institutions are Real Living Wage employers, share best practice on non-pay benefits and work collaboratively to address issues associated with the gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting and action.
Employee mapping for each anchor by gender, age and pay band against the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 has improved understanding of the opportunity to contribute to inclusion and improve social mobility through recruitment. This has informed pilot outreach employment support programmes in priority neighbourhoods to recruit to vacancies at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the Council. The pilot has now been mainstreamed and available to support all anchors.
The anchor institutions are now signed up to the Leeds Anchors Healthy Workplace Pledge and its implementation will be supported by a toolkit with impact monitored through workforce data and staff survey results.
