Birmingham Anchor Network Gets Underway

Member institutions

As the leading exponents of community wealth building in the UK, CLES are able to provide the members with access to expert support in specific areas (such as progressive procurement practice) and to provide a platform for communicating the learning from the Network to a wider audience.

The Network’s current strategic priorities include creating:

• To develop a shared workforce plan for a common job type for all network partners.
• To implement a shared apprenticeship pathway for young people with care experience.
• To agree a shared response to the new Procurement Act.
• To develop a collective approach to working with Tier 1 suppliers.
• To pilot Birmingham Anchor Network activity at a neighbourhood level.

Details of this work and the progress made can be found in the Network’s latest leadership report.

The Network is now seen as an economic asset in the city and a key delivery partner for multiple strategic initiatives including Birmingham’s levelling up strategy, Living Wage Partnership and the Combined Authority’s social economy growth action plan. This recognition of their role is helping to unlock these public sector institutions as economic drivers for the city in a way that has never been achieved before.

In response, the membership committed to a further seven years of partnership working in 2022.

Grow your own anchor network

CLES has developed packages of support for those at the front line of the economic reform process and is available to support in building and develop an anchor networks.