News and events
The Housing Market Renewal Programme in England: development, impact and legacy
Philip Leather and Brendan Nevin, along with Professor Ian Cole and Dr Will Eadson from Sheffield Hallam University, were commissioned by the Chairs of the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder regeneration projects to provide a review of the programme's achievements and the lessons learned. The ten HMR pathfinder projects were prematurely terminated by the Coalition government in 2011, nine years into their planned 15-20 year lifespan. The report charts the adverse impact of this on local communities, but also sets out the achievements of the programme since its inception and the innovative aspects of regeneration which were developed. It also considers the successes and failures of the programme and the lessons which can be learned for future regeneration programmes. With the virtual cessation of publically-supported regeneration activity, it is important that these lessons and innovations should be preserved for the future. The report concludes that the programme achieved a great deal during its lifetime but that the task of turning round the declining areas which it focussed on is far from complete. There is every prospect that further interventions will be required in the future as problems again worsen, especially in the context of the UK's wider economic problems. |Download pdf|
Best Comparative Policy Paper Award - American Political Science Association - Public Policy Section
Dr Shaun Bevan and Dr Will Jennings presented their paper 'Opinion-Responsiveness of Governing Agendas in the US and the UK: Institutional Filtering of Issue Priorities of the Public' at the APSA's Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., which has been selected as the Best Comparative Policy Paper. The award will be presented to them at the Public Policy Section Business Meeting at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the APSA in Seattle.
IPEG highlights of 2010
The main highlight of the year was the completion of the major ESRC-funded programme, undertaken jointly with the University of Southampton, on 'Rediscovering the Civic and Achieving Better Outcomes in Public Policy'. A summary of the results of this 3-year programme, which focused upon finding effective ways of encouraging active citizenship, was launched at a dedicated, well-attended event in London in June. The programme employed a range of innovative, experimental research methods to test the effectiveness of various concrete ways of engaging citizens in the delivery of socially useful activities, e.g. through charitable giving, recycling, volunteering, and on-line deliberation.
Also completed during the year was a large, cross-national ESPON project – ‘The Case for Agglomeration Economies in Europe’ – which used advanced econometric analysis to test the extent to which urban hierarchies are becoming stretched in the ongoing transition to a knowledge-driven economy. Through case study analyses of Manchester, Barcelona, Dublin and Lyon, it also assessed the contribution that metropolitan or city-regional governance arrangements make to successful adjustments to economic change. The findings were launched at a well-attended conference for policy-makers and practitioners in Manchester in October and form the basis of a further event organised with the Royal Town Planning Institute in December.
Within the university, IPEG was central to the development of the Faculty of Humanities’ ‘Transforming Cities Initiative’, which was awarded core funding for 2010-11 to pursue the priorities it identified during a ‘proof of concept’ year in raising the profile of urban research in the university, encouraging cross-disciplinary dialogue and joint-bidding and improving access to external funding, particularly from non-traditional sources.
These core activities, along with a range of research on the themes of social cohesion and housing and equalities, have helped IPEG to continue to deliver on its mission to employ advanced social scientific analysis in the pursuit of academic excellence, external influence and real world application.
The priorities for the coming year and beyond are to build upon the profile that IPEG has achieved in areas of research that engage with core aspects of national policy agenda and to ensure, during a difficult time for universities, that it is able to create and respond to external opportunities that remain available for high quality, independent and practical research. As a variety of funding sources become increasingly constrained, this will demand careful targeting of non-academic sources (e.g. European programmes, charitable organisations, private sector) and the construction of research alliances with internal and external partners that can retain and make the best use of IPEG strengths and capacities.