Local Institutions, Productivity, Sustainability and Inclusivity Trade-offs (LIPSIT)

The objectives of the project include answering the following research questions:

1. What kinds of local institutional structures concerned with developing and deploying local industrial strategies and improving local productivity, inclusivity and sustainability exist across the UK regions? How do the regional economies compare, now and as they are likely to develop?
2. What kinds of trade-offs do these organisations consider important and how do they negotiate multiple priorities, particularly when trying to achieve improvements in productivity, inclusivity and sustainability?
3. What trade-offs between productivity growth, inclusivity and sustainability are actually achieved?
4. Which regional institutional and organisational arrangements, now or in the past, have tended to produce 'good' management of the trade-offs between productivity growth, inclusivity and sustainability? Regional comparisons in the UK will be supplemented by a targeted search for better practices across regional governance structures in mainland Europe.

It is also an objective of the project to create awareness and encourage discussion of the findings and recommendations amongst a wider group of stakeholders (e.g. CBI, TUC, press), with a view to influencing opinion more broadly. Recommendations will cover:

1. Changes to the way national and regional policy makers operate within the current system of institutions and organisations
2. Modest changes to that system that policy makers responsible for the design of the system are likely to accept, and
3. More radical changes to that system that could be adopted in the future.If policymakers act on these recommendations this will strengthen, and potentially lead to the creation of, institutions that are better able to manage trade-offs relating to improved regional and local productivities.

• Professor Nigel Gilbert, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey - Principle Investigator
• Professor Simon Collinson, City-REDI, University of Birmingham - Co-Investigator
• Dr Charlotte Hoole, City-REDI, University of Birmingham - Co-Investigator
• Dr Helen Tilley, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University - Co-Investigator
• Professor Nigel Driffield, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick - Co-Investigator
• Dr Guus Hendriks, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick - Co-Investigator
• Charles Seaford, Demos - Research

The team also includes post-doctoral researchers at the University of Birmingham, University of Surrey, Cardiff University and Demos.

• We have a number of project partners from the public and private sector, including BEIS Industrial Strategy team, West Midlands Growth Company and the Welsh LGA.

Delivering Levelling Up: Don’t turn on the taps without fixing the pipes

September 2021 - Local Institutions, Productivity, Sustainability and Inclusivity Trade-offs (LIPSIT) Project Team

Achieving Levelling-Up: The Structures and Processes Needed 

Novermber 2020, Produced by Charles Seaford (Demos), Ben Glover (Demos), Professor Simon Collinson, Dr Charlotte Hoole, Dr Anastasios Kitsos and Dr Diana Gutierrez Posada (University of Birmingham), Dr Helen Tilley and Dr Ananya Mukherjee (University of Cardiff), Professor Nigel Gilbert and Dr Jack Newman (University of Surrey) and Professor Nigel Driffield (Warwick). 

Prosperity, Inclusivity and Sustainability across UK Regions  

April 2020, policy briefing by Dr Charlotte Hoole and Professor Simon Collinson,

The Complexity of Local Government in England: The West Midlands’ Rubik’s Cube
City-REDI Blog, September 2020

The Need for Greater Devolution in England to Respond to COVID-19 
City-REDI Blog, June 2020

UK Regional Productivity Variations and What Might be Driving These 
City-REDI Blog, March 2020

• Visit the project website

Dr Charlotte Hoole

Email: c.hoole@bham.ac.uk