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Economic prosperity in the UK is very unevenly distributed across space. Tackling these persistent disparities by improving local economic performance is a key policy objective. Research conducted by LSE staff has made direct contributions to government thinking and to specific policies both at central and local levels. First, the research has influenced the Government's shift from regional to city policy-making: abolishing Regional Development Agencies; establishing Local Enterprise Partnerships [LEPs] and bespoke `City Deals'. Second, researchers from LSE have directly influenced the development of economic strategies in Birmingham, Cambridge, the North East LEP area and Manchester.
LSE research played a key role in shaping the political and public debate around unpopular and ill-founded plans to introduce identity cards in the UK, showing the proposals to be unsafe, ineffective and costly. Plans for national biometric identity cards were scrapped by the coalition government in May 2010.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett described the detailed, cross-disciplinary report from academics at LSE as having "changed the culture and atmosphere around, and attitudes towards, the scheme and its intention". An alternative, privacy-friendly identity policy is being developed in its place with LSE researchers playing a significant role in its development. Lessons from the UK continue to influence government identity policy in other countries including India, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Millions of cases of multi-drug resistance bacterial infection occur each year. Yet the pharmaceutical industry has all but ceased investing in antibiotic development due to a combination of low profits and lack of appropriate incentives. In her 2011 Annual Report, the Chief Medical Officer called for more attention to be given to an antimicrobial resistance strategy for the UK and worldwide. The Unit's work analysed the nature of the incentives necessary to get antibiotic R&D going again. In particular it served as the basis for an urgent request by the EU Council for action and sparked the formation of the critical `transatlantic taskforce' (TATFAR): the first major international collaboration to tackle antibiotic resistance. Recommendations from the work served as the foundation for an EU-level public/private partnership and for US regulatory reform.
The ecosystem approach has been advocated as a way of moving consideration of biodiversity and the environment closer to the centre of decision-making. A conceptual `cascade model', developed by Haines-Young and Potschin, has successfully overcome the challenge of the ecosystem approach by showing how it can be used in practice. The cascade model forms the basis of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), recently introduced by the European Environment Agency (EEA), and has changed how UK and European policy-makers define the relationship between nature and the economy.
LSE research has formed the basis for a new assessment framework which helps healthcare planners set priorities within fixed budgets. Since 2005, a group of scholars at LSE has been developing a programme of applied research that is enabling organisations responsible for commissioning health services to make better use of their limited resources to improve value for their populations. It has led to: (a) new health spending strategies in the Isle of Wight in 2007, 2008 and 2009 that delivered a 50% reduction in emergency asthma admissions; (b) 15% savings on the spend on eating disorder services in Sheffield from 2009; (c) new guidelines for commissioning cost-effective care in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; (d) a user-friendly Excel decision support tool, user-guidance and instructions for facilitators available for free download, as well as training modules for potential users; and (e) the evaluation of alternative strategies for the allocation of US$10 million per year to fight tuberculosis in Sudan in 2013-15, this being the first of a series of pilots to adapt the LSE assessment framework to the new funding model of the Global Fund.
This case study demonstrates how extensive University of Manchester (UoM) research over nearly two decades has led to a step change in policy monitoring practices, through the development of innovative indicator methodologies that have strong analytical, learning and spatial emphases. The key impact was the direct translation of a UoM research report into the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's (ODPM) official spatial planning monitoring guidance, with all 394 English local planning authorities required to comply with evidence-based plan-making. This work continues to shape the policy debates and practices of the UK Coalition Government, with impact extending internationally, influencing policy, debate and practice within: the EC, the UN, the World Bank, Australia and China (Shantou).
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.