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Research on the management and implementation of EU Cohesion policy has informed the legislative proposals made in 2011 by the European Commission for the reform of Cohesion policy. It has also influenced some organisational changes within the Commission introduced in early 2013. EU Cohesion policy is the second largest area of expenditure in the EU budget, currently worth c. €347bn for the 2007-13 period, and provides funding for regional socio-economic development programmes in all EU Member States. The legislative proposals influenced by the Strathclyde research affect every national, regional and local authority in the EU benefiting from EU Structural and Cohesion Funds.
The research findings improved the comparative evidence base used by policy makers, providers and advocacy organisations when designing and delivering contracted out welfare to work programmes in the UK, including the development of service user safeguards implemented through the Department of Work and Pensions `Commissioning Strategy' and Work Programme (which will cater for over 3 million unemployed participants between 2011 and 2016). The research findings have also had a wider impact in informing policy makers, providers and user groups in other countries that have introduced or are introducing such contracting systems.
A theme within Professor David Mosse's anthropological research focuses on the relationship between policy, practice and effects in international development. His field-based ethnographic research challenges assumptions about policy implementation and the nature of success and failure in aid programming. His novel approach to questions of policy analysis and policy change has been widely influential on thinking among policymakers and practitioners across a range of organisations, sectors and countries. It has enhanced the capacity for adaptive self-critical understanding of the aid process among practitioners and aid organisations, while also demonstrating the importance of researcher-practitioner engagement in improving the delivery of aid and development programmes.
This case study is built upon the successful fusion of Spatial Planning with the Ecosystem Approach, translating complex theory into operational outputs for public and stakeholder engagement, which improve policy processes and outcomes across built and natural environments and fringe interfaces. `RUFopoly' and `EATME tree' are co-produced outputs, maximising engagement in learning spaces within game and web-portal formats respectively. For example, the Welsh Government has used both tools to design emerging policy frameworks (testimonial1). The novel research model employed builds research teams that integrate academic, policy and practice participants within a collective journey of (re)-discovery maximising reflective practice and social learning.
UEL's International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Economy of Childcare (ICMEC) researches service costs and equity risks associated with the marketisation and privatisation of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Its interdisciplinary research, which is frequently cited in national and international policy documents, has contributed to policy debate within the European Union, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and other supra-national bodies, and informed the UK Government's development of ECEC and child poverty policies.
Professor Michael Keating has worked on various aspects of public policy-making in Scotland and abroad, supported primarily by the ESRC and Leverhulme Trust. Impact has taken the form of a series of collaborative academic-practitioner engagements, involving civil servants, politicians, and civil society actors. These events have focused on establishing a common vocabulary and core concepts, while exploring difficult issues in public policy and facilitating mutual learning between academics and practitioners. Insights from these encounters have been institutionalised in the Scottish Policy Innovation Forum, as well as ongoing seminars, public lectures, innovative training courses for civil servants, and informal discussions.
The UK's decision to introduce voluntary modulation led directly from research conducted at Newcastle University between 1993 and 2008 which demonstrated conclusively that broadening the scope of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies beyond supporting agricultural production through `modulation' would greatly benefit the environment and rural economies. The success of modulation in the UK then led to compulsory modulation being introduced throughout the European Union (EU). Up to 2013 modulation has generated outstanding impacts by providing more than €10 billion of new funding for environmental management and rural development across the EU.
Research conducted by John Turnpenny shaped the recommendations of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). In 2010, the EAC addressed the need to embed sustainable development across government policy-making. This followed the closure of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) and the end of funding for the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). The EAC determined to change how it engaged with experts, while reaffirming and expanding its role in the overall scrutiny of government sustainability policy. Turnpenny's findings formed the basis of two of the thirteen headline recommendations in the EAC's 2011 report Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government. In addition his suggestions helped influence significant changes in the way that the EAC operates, and contributed to its wider impact among other policy actors.
Research needs to engage with global environmental challenges more effectively. How to achieve this has been the focus of studies by academics at Newcastle with their expertise recognised in the appointment in 2003 of Philip Lowe and Jeremy Phillipson to lead the £26million Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (Relu), funded by three Research Councils, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Scottish Government. The Directorship allowed Lowe and Phillipson to experiment with innovative processes for the conduct of research in 94 projects funded under the programme, in particular through instigating ideas of interdisciplinarity and co-production, and to develop techniques for assessing the efficacy of such methods. The insights gained from this effort have had significant and widespread impact on science policy and on organisations responses to environmental challenges such as government departments and agencies (DEFRA, Scottish Office and Food Standards Agency, for example), PLCs (including Wessex Water and M&S), environmental Trusts and more.
The Design Policy Group has directly influenced the design innovation policies of the UK and EU Governments since 2008. We will evidence a clear link between the unit's research and the EU's 2010 `Innovation Union' policy and 2013 Action Plan, demonstrate that they provided important underpinnings for the Welsh Government's 2013 `Innovation Strategy for Wales' and that the group directly engaged in the UK's Design and Innovation Policy debate through invited membership of a House of Lord's Select Committee.
[Throughout this template, references to underpinning research are numbered 1-6; sources to corroborate are numbered 7-15]