On 28 October, the new Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, will deliver their first Budget.
Regional mayors and strategic authorities (in England) are expected to get new powers over income tax, and business rates in their areas (as well as increased commissioning, skills funding and inward investment).
Businesses want good news about growth levers, tax and regulation. Public services want clarity, stability and investment. Campaigners and community stewards want to know that decisions will be fair, future-focused and honest about environmental and social challenges.
Most of the conversation will focus on how much money is moving to local areas. But is every stakeholder that powers our regional economies ready for this?
The Always Possible team have been exploring what actually makes that money work when it is intended to lead to specific outcomes.
It starts long before the job interview
Nine east London boroughs were given funding to support the unemployed; with unusual freedom in how to spend it.
Giving mayors more money to spend won't help if that money is handed out in the wrong order.
We are evaluating a £14 million government-funded programme in east London, run across nine boroughs, designed to use innovation experiments to help people who are long-term unemployed move back into work.
It's called the Economic Inactivity Trailblazer, and it has been funded by the Department for Work & Pensions.
Our first year evaluation was able to articulate the clear need that people have to rebuild their confidence and self-belief before they're able to apply for jobs or attend training. Yet, so many traditional programmes start with the job interview as the initial input.
If an employment programme is designed around practical steps towards work, but not also the psychological ones, the money doesn't get used the way it's meant to. We'll be going deeper on this project between now and the end of March.
The economic geography of the south east is both strengthened and complicated by proximity to London.
Devolution means regional identities need to be reimagined and reasserted beyond single cities.
Building prosperity and resilience needs to follow modern cultural and economic boundaries and not just historical ones.
The 'Gatwick Diamond' is an economic zone with a 70 year evolution, covering parts of Sussex, Surrey and London.
In July, our CEO Richard Freeman chaired the Gatwick Diamond Business network's first Power of Place conference, hosted at Wilton Park (a foreign policy and diplomacy conference centre).
The event brought people together to discuss how a place's economy, culture and identity connect, and how regional change drives practical decisions rather than just branding.
Delegates explored how a 'made up' place with no leaders and no single centre still ensures investors and government understand its intrinsic value.
The measurement of effective investment usually focuses on money in and multipliers out.
But the Always Possible team work with clients to see return and value as a multi-layered series of impacts.
Our assessment of the West Midlands Combined Authority Community Green Grants programme found £4.12 of clear social and economic value for every £1 spent.
As well as new direct skills and employability opportunities for many grant recipients, over 64,000 square metres of new wildlife habitat was created and 325,397 people had improved access to green spaces within 15 minutes of where they live.
Our report showed how 23 small well-designed projects (all working completely differently and in different ways), can still have a cumulative positive effect on a range of things from biodiversity net gain to full time job creation.
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