Housing, skills and employment support are a vital part of empowering communities and helping people access opportunities in places of need. This was a key focus at this year’s Housing, Learning and Work Conference. Michelle Dawson, Director of Housing and Community Investment at Abri, shares her reflections on the day.
In our session – Emerging Learnings from the Community Renewal Fund (CRF) - there was a clear theme: we need to build partnerships, share intelligence, and support our communities together.
Following Brexit, the UK needed to introduce a way to replace EU funding – the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). The Community Renewal Fund was set up to provide £220 million additional funding to help pilot programmes and new approaches to prepare for the UKSPF. It’s due to launch in the autumn, and guidance around how it will work and what it will fund was released recently.
Reflecting on the process for the CRF and the future hopes for the UKSPF, one thing was clear: we need to work together, and we need to act now.
The short timescales as part of the CRF process had its challenges and strengths; not all organisations have the ability to divert resources. But, it can also help focus down, prime ideas and encourage us to mobilise quickly. Building good relationships with local authorities, organisations and charities is key. Even more so with the deadline for investment plans for the UKSPF only a few months away.
As a housing provider, we’re in a great position to support local authorities, organisations, and charities in our communities to apply for funding and deliver projects. We have the expertise, and intelligence about what our customers, our communities need. We want to work in partnerships to deliver programmes that will impact and have the power to change lives and places. We’ve carried out extensive research to create 13 agile Community Investment Plans, delivering £15m of investment over five years to the communities most in need. Each community is different. So, our teams on the ground work with customers and communities to make sure we know what their concerns, issues, and needs are.
We share our intelligence with our partners, so that together we can identify hot spots and deliver the support that’s needed. With UKSPF funding being devolved to lead authorities, these relationships are more important than ever. As it currently stands, funding for employment and skills projects won’t be available through UKSPF until 2024, leaving a two-year gap. Abri will continue to offer our employment support, helping to fill this gap. So, our priority is to make sure that our partners are aware of how we can support the people they serve, and how we can compliment each other going forward.
As a large employer, it’s also important that we understand the local labour market and reflect our communities. We know that with the target to reach carbon zero by 2050 our skills landscape will be changing. So, we’re looking at how we can use the UKSPF to level up and respond to not only what our business needs, but what our customers, communities, and partners need.
